The Transcontinental Railroad - Detour
Brian Trumbore
President/Editor, StocksandNews.com

I'll admit, what follows has absolutely zero to do with "Wall Street History," as commonly defined, but it does have a bit to do with our series on the Transcontinental Railroad. The last few pieces, after all, have dealt with the Central Pacific's massive problems in building the railroad from Sacramento across the Sierra Nevada Mountains and much of the action transpires close to present-day Truckee, California, near the peak of the Sierras. Truckee (now Donner) Lake is where the Donner Party was caught by a blizzard in 1846. And now, the gruesome story that is part of American folklore.

---

George Donner was a prosperous 62-year-old farmer from Illinois who decided, along with wife Tamsen, to head west, following the Oregon Trail. They helped put together a wagon- train of 74 people (some accounts say 87, be careful?as I'll explain in a bit) and immediately made a pile of mistakes, including the fact they were leaving Illinois too late in the year and the wagons were overloaded.

The trip was rather uneventful until they got into Utah where they decided to try a shortcut through the Wasatch Mountains (here, they picked up 13 more travelers). Well, they got lost and had to backtrack before finally finding their way across the range and into the desert leading to the Great Salt Lake. Crossing the desert then exacted a big toll as they lost 100 oxen and were forced to abandon several wagons and precious supplies. Tempers rose and one of the leaders killed a young worker, after which he was expelled, leaving his wife and children behind.

By the time they reached Truckee, just east of the Sierra summit, in late October, the group was outright surly. They knew they needed to cross the pass before the snows came but it was too late. A blizzard hit on Oct. 31 and they were stranded.

After a two-week-long snowfall trapped them in two separate camps, and following the first death due to the conditions, 81 settlers remained, half children, with only enough meat to last them through the month of December.

It was decided at this point that 17 of the stronger, including five women, would set out across the pass, only they were trapped on the western slope with two then dying of starvation and exposure. Here, just before he died, Uncle Billy Graves urged his daughters to eat his body. While appalled, they consumed. Finally, after about 33 days, seven reached the Sacramento Valley. The others had died or were murdered.

Four search teams were then dispatched to find the group that was left behind. Back at the main camps at Alder Creek and Truckee Lake, the survivors had slaughtered their last livestock. One family killed their dog. When the first rescue party reached them, they discovered a grisly scene. 13 people had died and cannibalism was so widespread one pioneer noted casually in his diary that "Mrs. Murphy said here yesterday that she thought she would commence on Milt and eat him. It is distressing. Saturday the 27th a beautiful morning."

In all 47 survived, though George Donner himself was too weak to move on and stayed behind to die. His wife remained with him. One chronicler of the times noted:

"Although the trek westward reveals many examples of personal sacrifice and sharing, the Donner Party's fate highlights the ambitiousness, recklessness, and ruthlessness that also marked the westward movement."

Ric Burns wrote, directed and co-produced the film "The Donner Party" for PBS' "American Experience" a number of years ago. Here are some of his own thoughts and conclusions.

"The year the Donner party went West, 1846, was the year that historian Bernard DeVoto much later called the year of decision. It was really the big year of the American immigration west. Before 1846 began, California, Oregon, the entire Southwest, weren't part of America, and Americans tended to think of their country as really going up to the Great Plains and not extending beyond that. But beginning in the early '40s and then crescendoing in the Donner party year is this fantastic immigration to Oregon, to California and into the Southwest. The Donner party was part of a movement that was not just one wagon train that went wrong, but part of the whole country kind of looking to expand itself, looking to first, dream its own future, and then make it a reality. And so much of what the Donner party is about is a very tragic sense of how very potent dreams led people astray?.

"One of the most striking and often noted statistics from the Donner party, which had 87 people in it, is that two thirds of the people who survived were women. There are many theories that have been put forward as to why that was, ranging from biology like more subcutaneous fatty tissue so you have more calories on board to burn, to psychological theories that women do not panic as quickly under adversity, and that men, two sort of parallel psychological theories, that men for many reasons, most of them biological and psychological, wish to dig themselves out of any emergency they find themselves in, therefore, burnt more calories by exerting themselves too strenuously in a circumstance they couldn't actually do that much to change.

"In the end the most striking reason why women survived in much greater number is actually, to me, much more moving - which is that single women didn't tend to go across the Oregon / California trail. Almost all the women were in family units in one kind or another. In the Donner party, of the 22 single men out of the 87 people - who were attached as teamsters, servants, drivers, hired help of one kind or another - 19 died. So that pretty much accounts in and of itself for that disparate survival statistic between men and women. What it means is that if you didn't have a family to help you, you fell by the wayside."

Sources:

"America: A Narrative History," George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi
"The Oxford Companion to United States History," Jared Diamond and Joseph A. Kind
PBS.org

Wall Street History continues next week as I finally wrap up the story of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Brian Trumbore