Donner Party Tragedy III

Intro.: "A Moment in Time" with Dan Roberts.

Content: Following bad advice the wagon train lost three vital weeks in their race with time. At the peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountain range they were caught by the winter in early November and became snowbound. A few escaped on December 16th and after a month of great suffering brought word to the settlements in the Sacramento Valley. Two weeks later a rescue party led by Aquilla Glover began its trip into the mountains to find the Donner Party and bring them out. It took them two weeks of hard travel to get through to the stranded emigrants near the summit of Truckee Pass near what is now Lake Tahoe. In the meantime, death continued to stalk the camp by the Lake. The children were especially susceptible to the cold and with each death depression gripped the shrinking number.