Nancy Herman
Following the Donner Party
“I have not wrote you half the trouble we have had but I have wrote enough to let you know you don’t know what trouble is.” With these...
top of page
Following the Donner Party
Virginia's Path
Search
Nancy Herman
- Aug 14, 2021
- 1 min
Into the frontier: April 1846
In 1846, Independence, Missouri was a westernmost city of the United States, as well as the crossroads for the Santa Fe and Oregon...
58 views0 comments
Nancy Herman
- Aug 13, 2021
- 1 min
A dangerous crossing: May 1846
1800s photo of a Caw boatman poling a raft that carried pioneer wagons across the Kansas River. After following Virginia Reed’s route via...
61 views0 comments
Nancy Herman
- Aug 12, 2021
- 2 min
Alcove Spring: May 1846
Once on the other side of the Kansas River, the Donner and Reed families joined up with the much larger Russell Company, which was made...
47 views0 comments
Nancy Herman
- Aug 11, 2021
- 1 min
The first death: May 1846
The Big Blue River camp is an important landmark because it’s where Virginia Reed’s grandmother died of consumption. It was the first...
21 views0 comments
Nancy Herman
- Aug 10, 2021
- 2 min
Across the Great Plains: June 1846
Explorers, trappers and eventually, all west-bound emigrants followed the winding Platte River four hundred miles across the Great Plains...
26 views0 comments
Nancy Herman
- Aug 8, 2021
- 2 min
A Warning from fort Laramie: June 1846
Fort Laramie, in what is now Wyoming, was the only real community pioneers saw on their long trek across the frontier. In 1846 it was...
28 views0 comments
Nancy Herman
- Aug 7, 2021
- 1 min
Halfway to California: July 1846
(1800s illustration of wagon train parked beneath Independence Rock.) Independence Rock was the halfway mark to California. Some claimed...
23 views0 comments
Nancy Herman
- Aug 6, 2021
- 1 min
A parting of the ways: July 1846
(Above: The newly named Donner Party took this left hand turn near the Little Sandy River, in what is now Wyoming. They hoped to save...
154 views0 comments
Nancy Herman
- Aug 5, 2021
- 1 min
Betrayed at Fort Bridger: July 1846
Fort Bridger was so small and unpopulated compared to Fort Laramie that Virginia Reed must have felt quite disappointed as she rode...
51 views0 comments
Nancy Herman
- Aug 4, 2021
- 1 min
Hacking through the Wasatch: August 1846
It didn’t take long for Virginia Reed and others to realize that her father’s friend back at Fort Laramie, Jim Clyman, had been right...
47 views0 comments
Nancy Herman
- Aug 3, 2021
- 1 min
The Salt Desert: August 1846
The Donner Party expected the Salt Desert to be forty miles wide, a journey of two days and one night. They loaded their wagons with as...
33 views0 comments
Nancy Herman
- Aug 2, 2021
- 1 min
Killing and banishment: September 1846
A major turning point in the Donner Party’s story–and the definitive turning point for Virginia Reed and her family–was the killing of...
35 views0 comments
Nancy Herman
- Aug 1, 2021
- 2 min
The Great Basin: September 1846
The two areas of the dry, arid Great Basin that pioneers on the California Trail most dreaded were the Humboldt Sink and the waterless...
31 views0 comments
Nancy Herman
- Jul 31, 2021
- 1 min
Climbing the Sierra: October 1846
(The eastern slope of the Sierra from Reno, Nevada. When the Donner Party camped here, it was called Truckee Meadows, and the nervous...
37 views0 comments
Nancy Herman
- Jul 30, 2021
- 1 min
Snowbound: November 1846 – February 1847
This familiar drawing of the mid-1800s shows those already trapped at the lake camp hastily building shelter to brave out more storms...
33 views0 comments
Nancy Herman
- Jul 29, 2021
- 2 min
The rescue: February 1847
Virginia Reed, her mother, and her siblings were in danger of dying very soon. They had been subsisting on boiled ox hide, a thick,...
17 views0 comments
Nancy Herman
- Jul 28, 2021
- 1 min
Sutter’s Fort: March 1847
Sutter’s Fort in the mid-1800s. All pioneers on the California Trail eventually made it here to Sacramento. Once within the safe walls of...
18 views0 comments
bottom of page