Where Is Donner Party Facts From??? on Television Today -- Where Is Donner Party Facts From??? Is it of you know where is from??? American Experience offers the gripping tale of the Donner Party. High in the high Sierra Nevadas in the winter of 1846, the worst winter ever recorded in the high Sierras, tragedy struck their caravan. Only half of the party would come out alive.
The Donner Party was a group of California-bound American emigrants caught up in the "westering fever" of the 1840s. After becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846–1847, some of them resorted to cannibalism.
Through family journals, newspaper accounts and interviews with historians and descendants of the party, the film recreates the Donner Party's now legendary journey.
In June of 1846, along with thousand of others, George and Jacob Donner and James Frazier Reed led their families west out of Springfield, Illinois, to the "Promised Land" in California, two thousand miles away. Theirs was a prosperous caravan that would eventually swell to 87 men, women and children. They packed hugh wagons (one, two stories high), took lots of food, hired servants, even sewed $10,000 in bank notes between the covers of a quilt. When family leaders made the fateful decision to take a untried short cut to beat the coming winter, only half of them would come out alive. What began as a trek to the western paradise became a terrifying tale of misery, death, madness and cannibalism. But there was also extraordinary bravery, as survivors made their way to California, after enduring the worst winter ever recorded in the High Sierras. Through family journals, newspaper accounts and interviews with historians and descendants of the party, the film recreates the Donner Party's now legendary journey.
Tags: donner party facts, donner pass, donner party map, consumption, consumption disease
The Donner Party was a group of California-bound American emigrants caught up in the "westering fever" of the 1840s. After becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846–1847, some of them resorted to cannibalism.
Through family journals, newspaper accounts and interviews with historians and descendants of the party, the film recreates the Donner Party's now legendary journey.
In June of 1846, along with thousand of others, George and Jacob Donner and James Frazier Reed led their families west out of Springfield, Illinois, to the "Promised Land" in California, two thousand miles away. Theirs was a prosperous caravan that would eventually swell to 87 men, women and children. They packed hugh wagons (one, two stories high), took lots of food, hired servants, even sewed $10,000 in bank notes between the covers of a quilt. When family leaders made the fateful decision to take a untried short cut to beat the coming winter, only half of them would come out alive. What began as a trek to the western paradise became a terrifying tale of misery, death, madness and cannibalism. But there was also extraordinary bravery, as survivors made their way to California, after enduring the worst winter ever recorded in the High Sierras. Through family journals, newspaper accounts and interviews with historians and descendants of the party, the film recreates the Donner Party's now legendary journey.
Tags: donner party facts, donner pass, donner party map, consumption, consumption disease
