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...
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Following the Donner Party
Virginia's Path
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Nancy Herman
Aug 14, 20211 min read
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...
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Nancy Herman
Aug 13, 20211 min read
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...
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Nancy Herman
Aug 12, 20212 min read
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...
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Nancy Herman
Aug 11, 20211 min read
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...
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Nancy Herman
Aug 10, 20212 min read
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...
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Nancy Herman
Aug 8, 20212 min read
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...
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Nancy Herman
Aug 7, 20211 min read
Halfway to California: July 1846
(1800s illustration of wagon train parked beneath Independence Rock.) Independence Rock was the halfway mark to California. Some claimed...
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Nancy Herman
Aug 6, 20211 min read
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...
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Nancy Herman
Aug 5, 20211 min read
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...
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Nancy Herman
Aug 4, 20211 min read
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...
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Nancy Herman
Aug 3, 20211 min read
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...
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Nancy Herman
Aug 2, 20211 min read
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...
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Nancy Herman
Aug 1, 20212 min read
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...
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Nancy Herman
Jul 31, 20211 min read
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...
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Nancy Herman
Jul 30, 20211 min read
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...
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Nancy Herman
Jul 29, 20212 min read
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,...
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Nancy Herman
Jul 28, 20211 min read
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...
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