One hundred and seventy-four years ago, the first rescue crew arrived at Donner Lake, encountering a scene of carnage that still shocks all this time later.

Eighty-seven men, women and children entered the Sierra Nevada Mountains in October 1846. Known as the Donner Party, led by George Donner and James F. Reed, they were victims of bad luck and bad leadership.

Their biggest mistake was taking a new “shortcut” called the Hastings Cutoff, which led them through Utah and across the Great Salt Lake. Crossing the blistering Great Salt Lake took its toll on the cattle and the people; the party was three weeks behind schedule and low on supplies as they approached the Sierra Nevada Mountains. (A fascinating historical aside here: Lansford Hastings, the man who invented and promoted the shortcut without even trying it first, later died while trying to colonize Brazil with Confederate sympathizers.)

Then, bad luck came into play. A brutal winter storm descended on them, blocking the pass and trapping the Donner Party near today’s Donner Lake. Some families set up camp while others donned makeshift snowshoes to try to walk to Sutter’s Fort in present-day Sacramento for help. In the three weeks those desperate souls braved the woods, eight died, most of them cannibalized by the others. Only a handful made it to a Miwok village alive.

A photograph of Patty Reed, a survivor of the Donner Party, with her beloved toy doll. Reed saved the doll when the loss of draft animals forced the family to abandon its possessions. 

James L. Amos/Getty Images

The rescue party left Sutter’s Fort on Jan. 31, 1847, and found the survivors at Donner Lake on Feb. 18. Forty-six starving, half-dead people made it out alive.

Despite their infamy, because the Donner Party arrived ahead of the Gold Rush, they became some of the first white leaders in newly founded communities across the state. Their names still grace streets, schools and even a town, and the villain of the expedition was the first man to introduce lager to California.

Here are the fates of some of the most well-known members of the Donner Party.

The Reed family

The Reed family had an inauspicious start to their lives in the west, but modern-day San Jose was partly shaped by them. Patriarch James, 46, was the leader …….

Source: https://www.sfgate.com/sfhistory/article/What-happened-to-Donner-Party-survivors-16714121.php