As preppers we are always projecting, disseminating, like the ants as opposed to the grasshoppers of metropolitan lore. And having grown up in the formerly golden state of California my life events always draw me back to her record, which I became interested in while hunting and skiing in the Eastern Sierra’s. A plaza of remarkable elegance and fresh history 5 hours by auto from the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles, certainly 50+ cities piled together looking for a unifying name( still .)
And her most famous story of the collapse not so much to prepare as to know what your are getting into is a lesson to us all, one that eighty one (8 1) very hardy beings paid for dearly.
Westward Ho! For Oregon and California!
Who wants to go to California without expensing them anything? As many as eight young men, of good character, who can drive an ox squad, will be accommodated by gentlemen who will leave this vicinity about the first of April. Come boys! You can have as much tract as you crave without expenditure you anything. The authority of California causes big tracts of lands to persons who have to move there. The first desirable persons to apply, will be engaged. G. Donner and Others.
From an advertisement located by George Donner- Springfield, Illinois- March 18, 1846- 1 year, nearly to the day, before he died in Alder Creek Valley California.
Four times before the finding of GOLD in those slopes, actually mountains reaching above 14,400 ‘. Union General William Tucemseh Sherman, envisioned above, was the American military attache to California’s during its transition to statehood, and was a surveyor and explorer there in the 1850′ s.
John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, wrote the following- a transcription( due to the physical milieu of the original symbol) on the matter from the University of the Pacific’s collect 😛 TAGEND A Martinez, Cal ., November 19, 1910. Dear Madam: – Here is a sketch of the destinies of the Donner Party. The Donner party of immigrants fasten for California was organized in Illinois. It be comprised of about eighty parties nearly evenly divided between males and females and including a number of children. About a month was lost by taking a brand-new artery around the south end of Salt Lake instead of the usual route around the north end. Therefore owing to this delay the party did not arrive at the hoof of the west flank of the Sierra until October 31 st, 1846, when the snowfall commenced to fall, and their provisions began to fail. They attempted to cross but by the time they reached Donner Lake just below the summit of the reach they were stopped by the deep snow and built huts and tried to pass the winter there. In a few cases weeks famine gazed them in the face. Fifteen of the most significant started for Sutter’s Fort for help. Suffered exceedingly. Distance ninety miles in a straight line. After all had died on the way except four or five one of them overwhelmed to the Johnson’s ranch and renders were submitted to the three or four survivors; – these had eaten the dead as they came. The bulletin spread to Sutter’s Fort and San Francisco. Captain Sutter immediately routed men and mules with providings. San Francisco fostered fifteen hundred dollars and several other aid gatherings were sent out. 05907
He was a critic of the Donner Party, wrote that they should have lived, there was plentiful tournament in the field, all the materials needed to trap, to construct adequate shelter, firewood, realise snowshoes for hunting parties to venture out across the snow, an abundance of fresh water, and fish to be had under the ice of Donner Lake.
As preppers we should make three lessons from this, one, yes he was an early account of an arm-chair quarterback, he was eight (8) years old in 1846, and two, like others, he suggested that the decision to make the 300 mile shorter southern route around the Great Salt Lake actually retarded the party and third they should have not attempted a cover of the mountains that late in the fail. They should have wintered on the east descents of the Sierra Nevada’s before attempting the mountain crossing . He too speculated that the 15( 15) strongest were in reality the ones who could best trap and hunt and save the clique and establish it its best hope to survive the winter.
We all make decisions but not ever based on what is smart or safe or rational and they are unable mean life or death in certain circumstances.
John Muir’s was a genuine mountain man, human rights defenders of mad targets, hunter and mountaineer. He wintered alone in the Yosemite Valley as well as the Hetch Hechy Valley, since dammed and San Francisco’s prime fresh water reservoir.
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