Who was the Donner Party?
The Donner Party was a group that was going to head west. The leader of this group George Donner and his family. In there group there was a total of 23 wagons and 87 people. They traveled 10-12 miles everyday.
Why did the Donner family go west?
The Donner family along with eight other families met in Illinois to travel to the west for a better life beyond the Rockies.
Why did the Donner Party take the Hasting's Cutoff?
Not all of the Donner Party took the hasting cutoff. They split up and some went on the Hasting cutoff while others went the route that almost everyone else had gone before. The Hasting's cutoff was in one of the traveler's books that George Donner had read and it said that it would cut time off of there trip. In reality it actually put time on the journey. Not to mention that during that time it was November and December so it snowed very hard. It did not turn out well for them.
How does this relate to today?
This relates to today because we know have the Donner pass. Not to mention we also have the Donner Lake which when they were stranded they were only a couple miles from it. Plus cannibalism is very ILLEGAL now.
How much time did the party loose on the cutoff?Three weeks or so. They were hacking a brand-new trail through the Wasatch and then endured this horrible crossing of the desert. That's what slowed them down.
Without this delay, would they have made it over the Sierra before the snow started to fall?When they finally did reach the mountains, they were within a week of being in the clear. If they hadn't gone on the shortcut, we probably wouldn't know who the Donner party is today.
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