George Donner - Donner Party

Donner Party

George Donner lived just outside Springfield, Illinois. On April 14, 1846, he, his brother Jacob, and James F. Reed, along with their families and hired hands, set out for California in covered wagons as part of the Boggs Company. Three months later, at the Little Sandy River in Wyoming, George was chosen to lead the group, now known as the Donner Party. The Donner Party took the Hastings Cutoff through the Wasatch Mountains in Utah and they crossed the Great Salt Lake Desert, rejoining the California Trail west of Elko, Nevada. They arrived at the Sierra Nevada mountains late in the season and were trapped by snow on the eastern side of Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake) west of Truckee, California.