T at Donner Memorial

T at Donner Memorial, originally uploaded by THOS.

At Donner Memorial Park we walked through the early first snow of the season on a nature trail around the site where the Donner Party spent the brutal winter of 1846-47 in three crudely constructed cabins and two tents. Recounting that tragic time: "The 81 members of the Donner Party 25 men, 15 women and 41 children, including six nursing infants were now huddled miserably in two makeshift winter camps. The Breens and their seven children took over an abandoned shack not far from Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake). Peggy Breen did what she could to calm the younger children. Lewis Keseberg built a rough lean-to for his family against one side of the Breen shack. Nearby, the Eddys crowded into a hastily constructed log cabin with the Murphys, the Fosters and the Pikes. A second drafty cabin housed the family of Franklin Graves at one end and Margaret Reed and her four children at the other. Six miles away, on Alder Creek, the two Donner families huddled in tents where the storm had caught them." (PBS film: The Donner Party: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/donner/)