Saving the Donner Party

Saving the Donner Party PDF Author: Richard F. Kaufman
Publisher: Archway Publishing
ISBN: 148080939X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Books, articles, and commentaries have told the story of how the storm of the century in the fall of 1846 trapped eighty-one innocent men, women, and children in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and how brave men risked their lives to save them. In Saving the Donner Party, author Dr. Richard F. Kaufman tells the story of the rescuers of the Donner Party. During the last two decades, Dr. Kaufman has compiled a record of historical documents and letters from Sutters Fort State Park and the California State Library. He reviews the older literature with a more modern approach, introducing orbital satellite studies with panoramic descriptions of travel routes not seen before. Using historical weather statistics and tree ring technology, he presents a more thorough understanding of the so-called storm of the century that enveloped the Donner Party. His account focuses on the massive effort and expenditure of resources by the rescue parties, involving the progress of the Mexican War going on at that time. Saving the Donner Party presents an in-depth interpretation of the event with surprising revelations that changed the historical setting and legacy of California, adding richly to the literature of this topic and updating the knowledge of the Donner Party episode.

Saving the Donner Party

Saving the Donner Party PDF Author: Richard F. Kaufman
Publisher: Archway Publishing
ISBN: 148080939X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
Books, articles, and commentaries have told the story of how the storm of the century in the fall of 1846 trapped eighty-one innocent men, women, and children in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and how brave men risked their lives to save them. In Saving the Donner Party, author Dr. Richard F. Kaufman tells the story of the rescuers of the Donner Party. During the last two decades, Dr. Kaufman has compiled a record of historical documents and letters from Sutters Fort State Park and the California State Library. He reviews the older literature with a more modern approach, introducing orbital satellite studies with panoramic descriptions of travel routes not seen before. Using historical weather statistics and tree ring technology, he presents a more thorough understanding of the so-called storm of the century that enveloped the Donner Party. His account focuses on the massive effort and expenditure of resources by the rescue parties, involving the progress of the Mexican War going on at that time. Saving the Donner Party presents an in-depth interpretation of the event with surprising revelations that changed the historical setting and legacy of California, adding richly to the literature of this topic and updating the knowledge of the Donner Party episode.

History of the Donner Party

History of the Donner Party PDF Author: Charles F. McGlashan
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486287122
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This gripping account of the doomed expedition combines survivor interviews with diary entries to reveal not only a stark tale of desperation but also many inspiring acts of heroism.

The Best Land Under Heaven

The Best Land Under Heaven PDF Author: Michael Wallis
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1631494007
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence Finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award A Publishers Weekly Holiday Guide History Pick “A book so gripping it can scarcely be put down.... Superb.” —New York Times Book Review "WESTWARD HO! FOR OREGON AND CALIFORNIA!" In the eerily warm spring of 1846, George Donner placed this advertisement in a local newspaper as he and a restless caravan prepared for what they hoped would be the most rewarding journey of a lifetime. But in eagerly pursuing what would a century later become known as the "American dream," this optimistic-yet-motley crew of emigrants was met with a chilling nightmare; in the following months, their jingoistic excitement would be replaced by desperate cries for help that would fall silent in the deadly snow-covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada. We know these early pioneers as the Donner Party, a name that has elicited horror since the late 1840s. With The Best Land Under Heaven, Wallis has penned what critics agree is “destined to become the standard account” (Washington Post) of the notorious saga. Cutting through 160 years of myth-making, the “expert storyteller” (True West) compellingly recounts how the unlikely band of early pioneers met their fate. Interweaving information from hundreds of newly uncovered documents, Wallis illuminates how a combination of greed and recklessness led to one of America’s most calamitous and sensationalized catastrophes. The result is a “fascinating, horrifying, and inspiring” (Oklahoman) examination of the darkest side of Manifest Destiny.

Death in the Donner Party

Death in the Donner Party PDF Author: Emily Rose Oachs
Publisher: Lerner Publications (Tm)
ISBN: 1512411159
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
Explore the tragedy of the Donner party, a group of American pioneers trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains during the harsh winter of 1846-1847. Cause-and-effect analysis reveals how the decisions made by leaders of the expedition ended in disaster.

The Expedition of the Donner Party and Its Tragic Fate

The Expedition of the Donner Party and Its Tragic Fate PDF Author: Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
Publisher: IndyPublish.com
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
Eliza Houghton (b. 1843) was the youngest child of George Donner, one of two Springfield, Illinois, brothers who organized the ill-fated California-bound emigrant party that bore their name. Eliza and her older sisters were rescued by relief parties that made their way to the stranded travellers at Donner Lake, but their parents perished, and the girls were left to make their way alone in the West. The expedition of the Donner party and its tragic fate (1911) begins with Mrs. Houghton's account of her childhood and the family's tragic overland journey, and rescue. She continues with her life as an orphan, first at Fort Sutter, and then with a family in Sonoma and with her older half-sister in Sacramento. She describes the impact of the gold rush and new immigration on the area, farm work and domestic work, and her own education in public schools and St. Catherine's Convent in Benicia. She writes at length of the emotional scars caused by contemporary rumors of cannibalism among the Donner Party and offers full accounts of Donner family history as well as the background of her husband, Samuel Houghton. An appendix contains several documentary sources for the history of the Donner Party.

The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California

The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California PDF Author: Lansford Warren Hastings
Publisher: Applewood Books
ISBN: 1557092451
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
Published in 1845, this guidebook for pioneers is a reproduction of one of the most collectible books about California and the Western movement. It was the guidebook used by the Donner Party on their fateful journey. In addition, because Hastings' shortcut route through the Rockies produced such tragedy, the War Department commissioned The Prairie Traveler.

The Donner Party Chronicles

The Donner Party Chronicles PDF Author: Frank Mullen
Publisher: a Halycon
ISBN: 9781890591014
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
The Reno Gazette-Journal and the Nevada Humanities Committee present Frank Mullen's account of the Donner Party, accompanied by hundreds of historical illustrations and Marilyn Newton's photographs of the trail today.

Desperate Passage

Desperate Passage PDF Author: Ethan Rarick
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198041500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
In late October 1846, the last wagon train of that year's westward migration stopped overnight before resuming its arduous climb over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, unaware that a fearsome storm was gathering force. After months of grueling travel, the 81 men, women and children would be trapped for a brutal winter with little food and only primitive shelter. The conclusion is known: by spring of the next year, the Donner Party was synonymous with the most harrowing extremes of human survival. But until now, the full story of what happened, what it tells us about human nature and about America's westward expansion, remained shrouded in myth. Drawing on fresh archaeological evidence, recent research on topics ranging from survival rates to snowfall totals, and heartbreaking letters and diaries made public by descendants a century-and-a-half after the tragedy, Ethan Rarick offers an intimate portrait of the Donner party and their unimaginable ordeal: a mother who must divide her family, a little girl who shines with courage, a devoted wife who refuses to abandon her husband, a man who risks his life merely to keep his word. But Rarick resists both the gruesomely sensationalist accounts of the Donner party as well as later attempts to turn the survivors into archetypal pioneer heroes. "The Donner Party," Rarick writes, "is a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous. Often, the emigrants displayed a more realistic and typically human mixture of generosity and selfishness, an alloy born of necessity." A fast-paced, heart-wrenching, clear-eyed narrative history, A Desperate Hope casts new light on one of America's most horrific encounters between the dream of a better life and the harsh realities such dreams so often must confront.

Saving the Donner Party

Saving the Donner Party PDF Author: Richard F. Kaufman, PhD
Publisher: Archway Publishing
ISBN: 1480809381
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Books, articles, and commentaries have told the story of how the storm of the century in the fall of 1846 trapped eighty-one innocent men, women, and children in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and how brave men risked their lives to save them. In Saving the Donner Party, author Dr. Richard F. Kaufman tells the story of the rescuers of the Donner Party. During the last two decades, Dr. Kaufman has compiled a record of historical documents and letters from Sutter's Fort State Park and the California State Library. He reviews the older literature with a more modern approach, introducing orbital satellite studies with panoramic descriptions of travel routes not seen before. Using historical weather statistics and tree ring technology, he presents a more thorough understanding of the so-called "storm of the century" that enveloped the Donner Party. His account focuses on the massive effort and expenditure of resources by the rescue parties, involving the progress of the Mexican War going on at that time. Saving the Donner Party presents an in-depth interpretation of the event with surprising revelations that changed the historical setting and legacy of California, adding richly to the literature of this topic and updating the knowledge of the Donner Party episode.

The Archaeology Of The Donner Party

The Archaeology Of The Donner Party PDF Author: Donald L Hardesty
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
The tragic saga of the Donner Party has inspired both legend and scholarship ever since the survivors were rescued from the High Sierra snows in the spring of 1847. When archaeologist Donald L. Hardesty and four colleagues—a historian and three other archaeologists—turned their collective attention to the ordeal of the Donner Party, the result was an original and sometimes surprising new study of this pioneer group and their place in the history of overland migration. Now available for the first time in paperback, The Archaeology of the Donner Party combines the fruits of meticulous investigation of the Sierra Nevada sites with scientific analysis of artifacts discovered there and interpretation of the documents of the party and the memoirs of survivors. Through this interdisciplinary approach, Hardesty and his colleagues offer new insight into the ordeal of these ill-fated emigrants and demonstrate the vital role that archaeology can play in illuminating and expanding our understanding of historical events. Contributions by Michael Brodhead, Donald K. Grayson, Susan Lindstrom, and George L. Miller.