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Donner Lake in the distance is Donner Memorial State Park.
Donner State Memorial Park in Truckee California is a popular spot with campers and picnickers. It’s a fun day trip. Take the leisurely walk around the trickling brook, catch an occasional glance of foraging deer, and spend an hour in the museum pouring over old implements that belonged to members of the ill-fated Donner Party. But there is another side to the story; the dark side.
Silence never falls in this place where so many dreams and lives were lost. Even in darkness, cars speed past on Interstate 80 one-after-the-other and the winds whisper across the tops of tall pine trees. The tapping and skittering of forest creatures as they forage for food, echo through the night. And yet, there is a feeling of stillness and finality that lingers here. Nothing more than trace memories forever imbedded in the shadows of the Sierra, or the ghosts of long dead men, women and children who were trapped here in the winter of 1846, who can say?
Two years before the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, the Donner Party headed out of present day Reno Nevada, toward California. As they traveled out of the meadows on the final leg of their long and arduous journey, snowflakes began drifting lazily to earth. The air turned icy, a fierce wind blew down from the Sierra churning the snow into a white fury. George Donner’s lead wagon was forced to stop with a broken axle.
The other wagons slowly rolled on in the snow. They made it six miles westward before they too were forced to stop in the heavy snow. They would wait/ But days turned into weeks, weeks into months; food supplies dwindled at the encampment. The pet dogs and the livestock had already been eaten; their bones boiled for broth so many times that all the marrow and the nourishment had long seeped from them. Men attempted to hunt wild game but, aside from an occasional bird, met with dismal failure. Hungry and cold, the children grew listless and rarely ventured beyond their makeshift homes. The very young and the weak died first; their bodies were pulled to the edge of the camp and gently covered with snow. Perhaps the dead were the fortunate ones; the unspoken words passed from one hollow-eyed person to the next.
There was nothing more. Half mad with hunger, they made their fateful decision.
The dead would be eaten. Those who survived would carry the memories for the rest of their days. Bodies were dug from their shallow graves and hacked into smaller parts that were boiled in community pots. Decorum was maintained; the bodies were carved and separated so that none of them would devour the flesh of their own family members.
Half the party would perish here during the Sierra snow storm of 1846-47.
Rescuers came in the spring, and buried the dead in a communal grave. Survivors would carry the stigma of that winter in the Sierra, to their own graves.
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