History of the Donner Party

The Donner Party was a group of American Pioneers who set out for California in a wagon train. Delayed by a series of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846-47 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. Some of the emigrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, eating the bodies of those who had succumbed to starvation and sickness or murder.



Historians have described the episode as one of the most spectacular tragedies in Californian history and in the record of western migration.