donner party

James Frazier Reed, one of the leaders of the Donner Party, sets off with his family in a covered wagon known as the Palace Car, planning to travel to California in style, but he is exiled from the group after a fight with a drover, and goes on ahead, only to find himself separated from his wife and children who are trapped in sudden snow storms.

A mother and her children struggle to survive a dangerous expedition through the mountains so they can be reunited with the rest of the family.

Recounts the journey of the Donner Party which, in 1846, sought to travel from Independence, Missouri, to California but took an untried shortcut that trapped them in the Sierra Nevada mountains during a terrible winter.

Examines the experiences of the Donner Party, a group of eighty-seven individuals that headed West from Illinois in 1846, became trapped in a snowstorm, and was forced to take desperate measures to stay alive.

Describes the journey of the ill-fated Donner Party, ninety pioneers who became stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the winter of 1846-47.

Draws from newspaper memoirs and letters of survivors to tell the story of the Donner Party, who, encouraged by reports of an easy short-cut through the Sierra Nevada mountains, set out from Illinois in 1846 with dreams of the good life in California and become trapped by a blizzard that claims over thirty lives.

Uses materials from letters and diaries written by survivors of the Donner Party to relate the experiences of that ill-fated group as they endured horrific circumstances on their way to California in 1846-47.

Relates the ordeals faced by a group of pioneers on their journey from Illinois to California in 1846.