One hundred and sixty-plus years ago this week, members of the Donner Party had entered the forbidding Great Salt Lake Desert. The pioneers faced an 80-mile trek across a vast salt flat consisting of a thick crust of alkali so hard the wagon wheels didn't leave a trail.

This installment is #9 in a series tracing the experiences of the Donner Party as it worked its way into American history. View the entire series.

Mud & Muck
The emigrants moved along reasonably well for several days until they reached the center of the desert. There a shallow lake had changed the alkali into a morass of mud and muck. It bogged the oxen down as they tried to trudge through the glue-like substance; it stuck to the wagon wheels and made them nearly impossible to roll.

By this time the twenty-two wagons in the Donner group had broken into three separate segments as the various families pushed through the desert. It had become every man for him self. To stop on this part of the trail meant a gruesome death by heat and dehydration. William Eddy, with his wife and two young children, led the caravan, with the bulk of the pioneers in the middle and the heavily-laden Donner and Reed wagons at the rear.

Pilot Peak
In the far distance, the emigrants could see Pilot Peak towering at 10,716 feet in elevation. It is just west of the present-day border between Utah and Nevada. At the base of the mountain is a year-round spring with life-giving, fresh water. The desert atmosphere was distorted due to heat waves that shimmered over the sun-baked salt flat, and Pilot Peak seemed to float and hover as the pioneers watched it. Although they pushed forward day and night, they never seemed to draw much closer to the peak.

Despite the illusion, however, they were getting closer to the spring. William Eddy and his family were the first to reach the base of Pilot Peak on September 2.

After nearly four days of hard driving, the other pioneers were strung out in the desert and their livestock were beginning to collapse from heat and lack of water. As the desperate need for water increased, most of the emigrants unhitched their oxen from the wagons so the draft animals could proceed ahead unencumbered. Gradually the pioneers left their wagons in the desert and forced their dying livestock forward in a scramble to reach the base of Pilot Peak and the fresh water there.

James Reed
Three days into the desert crossing, James Reed had ridden ahead on horseback to get water for his family and the oxen pulling his wagons. He had instructed his teamsters that if the oxen got too weak to pull any more, they were to unhitch them and drive them towards Pilot Peak.

Once Reed reached the spring, he had filled containers with water. He headed back to his wife and children during the cooler early morning hours of September 3. Along the way he met his teamsters. They had unhitched the wagons and were driving the cattle and horses toward the spring. Reed warned them to be careful because if the steers smelled water in the distance, they would go crazy and stampede.

At dawn, Reed reached his family. It was huddled in one of the family's three stranded wagons. They spent the whole day waiting for the teamsters to return with oxen to pull the wagons out of the desert; no one showed up. That night, the Reed family began walking to the spring with the family's five dogs.

Jacob Donner
At daybreak they came across Jacob Donner's wagons that were also marooned without draft animals to pull them. Intent on retrieving his wagons and finding out what had happened to his livestock and horses, James Reed left his family with the Donners and rode on ahead toward the spring. When he reached it, his worst fears were realized. Just as Reed had suspected, once the cattle were loose and smelled water, they had had run into the desert and were gone.

It was tragic news for Reed. He had lost his three wagons; they were stranded in the desert, loaded with the supplies and provisions needed to reach California. He had lost 38 head of cattle. He was now down to one cow and one steer.

This installment is #9 in a series tracing the experiences of the Donner Party as it worked its way into American history. View the entire series.

Mark McLaughlin, weather historian, who lives on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe, wrote the series as well as other books on the subject of Lake Tahoe's history. For more of McLaughlin's work, visit www.micmacmedia.com.