History of the Donner Party: A Tragedy of the Sierra Book

History of the Donner Party, a Tragedy of the Sierra by Charles Fayette McGlashan was originally published in 1880. This is what I found out about the author who I've never heard of before and most of this was from his rather long obituary:

No one man was more prominent in the development of Truckee and Eastern Nevada County in California than Charles Fayette McGlashan. He was born in Beaver Dam, Wis., August 12, 1847, the one son of a family of eight children. His mother died in 1849 and five years later the father took his children to Healdsburg, Cal., where the boy received his early schooling, supplemented by a course at Williston academy in Massachusetts. Returning to California he taught school at Placerville, where he married Miss Jennie Munson, his first wife. In the early seventies he removed to Truckee, where he was principal of the grammar school, studied law, was admitted to practice and became editor of the Truckee Republican, into whose editorial columns he injected a vigor that made it one of the most widely quoted papers in the state. In 1879 he married Miss Leonora Keiser as his second wife, and two years later went to Santa Barbara as editor of the Press there, but returned to Truckee in 1883 to reside there until his death.

He was elected to the State Assembly in 1885 and was active in fraternal societies, having been grand chancellor of the Knights of Pythias and prominent in Freemasonry, of which he had been a member for more than fifty years. Truckee lodge recently presented him with a gold button to commemorate this. As an author, he wrote for the Sacramento Record-Union in 1877 the history of the Mountain Meadow massacre. In 1878, while editor of the Truckee Republican, a subscription to the Republican from a survivor of the Donner Party led to McGlashan's writing several articles on the subject. These he published serially as a history of the Donner Party and they resulted in correspondence and interviews with survivors and in 1879, the publication of his book "History of the Donner Party, A Tragedy of the Sierra" which is regarded as the final authority on the subject.

He organized the McGlashan Water Company, established the winter sports carnival at Truckee with the first Ice palace, was a leader in forming the Meadow Lake high school district and engaged in other civic and business activities. As private interests, he took up entomology and astronomy. In the former he created a butterfly farm with the aid of his daughter Ximens, where rare specimens were propagated for collectors and where a new specimen was discovered now known to science as Meletea mcglashanae. In astronomy he started a course of lectures and published a series of seasonal star and planet charts. He presented to Truckee high school a telescope and other astronomical apparatus. Geology and topography also interested him. Adjoining his home he build the noted rocking-stone museum, where there is a large collection of California historical relics, ancient native weapons and the like and which is especially notable for its Donner party remains.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it in all of this, but he was also a lawyer and a teacher. And I never would have come up with Meletea mcglashanae on my own. He also had unusual names for his children, some of them anyway. We have Undine, Nonette, Lotus, Zimena Bliss, and Ximena. There are others but they have names like Elizabeth and George. So on to the book he wrote and the things I learned from it.

Here's the quick part of the story, the Donner party is called that because a whole group of people followed George Donner and James Reed from Springfield, Illinois and a few other places to California. So in the spring of 1846 90 people (more or less) headed to California and since it was only 1846 they had a lot of wagons and horses and oxen and things like that with them, so it was called a wagon train. The journey usually took about 4 months up to 6 months, but not this time. Most wagon trains followed the Oregon Trail route from Independence, Missouri to the Continental Divide, traveling at about 15 miles a day. The trail generally followed rivers to South Pass, a mountain pass in Wyoming, which was relatively easy for wagons to pass through and from there, wagon trains had a choice of routes to their destination. There was an increase in people going to California and Oregon in these years and they all took the regular route, except the Donner party that is.

There were things that went wrong with the Donner's, broken wagon, stolen horses (by Indians I think) and it was taking them longer than they thought it would to get to the west coast. Unfortunately they heard about Lansford W. Hastings, and his short cut. Hastings went to California in 1842 and saw the promise of the undeveloped country. To encourage settlers, he published The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California and in it described a direct route across the Great Basin which would save them 300 miles, or something like that. However, Hastings had not traveled any part of his proposed shortcut until early 1846 on a trip from California to Fort Bridger. And as of 1846, Hastings was one of only two men documented to have crossed the southern part of the Great Salt Lake Desert, but neither had been accompanied by wagons. It went different when you were accompanied by wagons. We're told that it is crucial to cross the vast wilderness of the Sierra Nevada at a certain time to ensure that wagon trains would not be bogged down by mud created by spring rains, or by massive snowdrifts in the mountains from September and onwards. They didn't make it, well, at least they missed the mud. And now I'm skipping the rest of the story to tell you of the things I've learned reading the History of the Donner Party.

1. Don't take the shortcut. Ever.

2. If you are going across the country with a horse and wagon instead of a car, train, or plane; take food, lots of food. More than you would ever need. Just in case you will need it.

3. And lots of clothing, warm clothing. Sweaters, jackets, coats, boots, gloves, take them all.

4. Fill another wagon with nothing but wood, big logs, little sticks, take them all, don't forget matches either.

5. If you get really tired of carrying blankets out to the wagon before you go, too bad, keep carrying.

I think that may get you there, but just in case, stop at all the Wal-Mart's and grocery stores you see on the way before you get to the desert, spending the upcoming months in the upcoming mountains in the upcoming blizzards won't be fun without food. Unless there's a hotel there by now. I'm not sure I could bring myself to go check and see what's there this book was so creepy. And true.

One more thing, I'm not sure if I should tell you to make sure you don't die stuck out there in the snow or you'll get eaten, and not by wolves and bears; or if I should tell you to die so you won't have to be one of the people who were starving and had to eat to live. Everything else had already been eaten. And I mean everything. Animal hides, ground up bones, whatever you can think of. It was so sad, they tried so hard to stay alive.

I was thinking about giving the book four stars, but I won't read it again and it seems like four stars should be for something I would want to read again some day, although I found more books about this story that I would like to read. Three stars for now though.

I just thought of what you should do, take your car and a cell phone with you and you should be fine. And lots of books. Happy reading.