Bad luck and poor decisions turned the already dangerous trek from Missouri to California into a fatal affair for roughly ...

The disastrous, three-month crossing of Utah and Nevada in 1846 set the stage for one of the Old West’s worst tragedies. Per ...

On February 19, 1847, the first rescuers reach surviving members of the Donner Party, a group of California-bound emigrants ...

On Dec. 26, 1846, some members of the ill-fated Donner Party are believed to have turned to cannibalism in order to survive during a Sierra Nevada snowstorm. The information below originally ...

The Donner Party memorial in Truckee, Nevada county, CA. A few miles north of Lake Tahoe. 2012, Library of Congress. Objectives: Students will examine how for many, the Donner Party’s story ...

Ric Burns wrote, directed and co-produced the film The Donner Party. He describes why the story of the Donner party has had such a lasting resonance, and how it fits into America’s grand ...

The first rescuers reached members of the Donner Party, who had been snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains near the California-Nevada border for nearly four months.

The answer haunted the 87 migrants of the Donner Party, who in 1846 attempted a shortcut to the Western frontier but instead lost 39 of their group to a winter of hunger and fierce blizzards.

Here, you'll find a great stone pedestal commemorating the Donner Party, the legendary pioneers who fell victim to the harsh Sierra Nevada winter of 1846 to 1847. The party (originally consisting ...