Athletes to retrace Sierra escape of Donner Bash survivors | Countrywide

The Donner Get together people traveled 2,000 miles (3,218 kilometers) west in a wagon coach in 1846, mainly from Missouri and Illinois, to claim no cost land in California in advance of the discovery of gold in what was then the Mexican Territory.

Trouble started when they took an unproven “shortcut” and ended up delayed in Utah and Nevada. Eighty-just one men, women and children attained the Sierra in late Oct and ended up trapped in the snow just before some designed cabins at what’s now Donner Lake.

Because the 1980s, archaeologists and other folks have investigated numerous stretches of the Forlorn path that begins with a 1,000 foot (304 meter) elevation climb around what is now the I-80 corridor, but the total route topping 7,000 feet (2,133 meters) has remained a issue of speculation.

Seven many years back, Crowley and Twietmeyer started out gathering accounts from diaries and historic journals to review and contrast a variety of descriptions of the escape party’s day by day actions for the duration of the 33-day journey that finally saved the life of about 40 other people.

They eventually recognized at minimum 6 different theories about the route. Scouring satellite imagery and topographic maps, they established out on the floor to assemble initially-hand observations on just about every path phase right before settling on the two most very likely.

Judy DePuy, longtime member of the Truckee Donner Railroad and Donner Summit historical societies, claimed previous initiatives to discover the route relied on aerial photos and diaries that had been never truth-checked on the ground.