One hundred and sixty-plus years ago this week, members of the Donner Party rested at Pilot Springs at the foot of Pilot Peak in Nevada near the Utah border. The weary pioneers tried to recover from their disastrous trek westward across the Great Salt Lake Desert.

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.

In addition to James Reed's, two other families had lost teams of oxen and were forced to abandon wagons in the desert. George Donner lost one wagon, as did Louis Keseberg, a German immigrant with a wife and two young children.

Reed, who lost virtually all of his draft animals, had left all three of his wagons behind in the salt flat, but he was able to borrow some livestock and managed to get one of his rigs rolling again.

The food provisions that Reed could not consolidate into his solitary wagon were divided among the other pioneers. People that lost wagons were forced to leave many of their personal possessions behind. The goods were cached (hidden) in the desert near the springs with the hope that the goods might be recovered someday.

William Graves, 17
William Graves was only seventeen years old when his family joined with the Donner group while it was struggling through the Wasatch Mountains. The teenager helped Reed search for his lost oxen in the desert; Graves' father, Franklin, loaned cattle to hitch to Reed's last wagon. The young man did not care for James Reed and for the rest of his life Graves would blame Reed for leading the wagon train down the wrong mountain canyon, for the desert fiasco, and for all the delays that ultimately trapped the emigrants east of Donner Pass in October 1846.

Many of William Graves' family members died during the harsh winter ahead, and his anger was still evident thirty-one years later in an article for the Russian River Flag:
"As I can remember, it took us about 40 days to get to Salt Lake. Here, at the crossing of the river Jordan, we struck the other road and had no trouble till we got to the Salt Lake desert, on the southwest side of the lake, which is about seventy-five miles without water. Reed, being an aristocratic fellow, was above working, so he had hired hands to drive his teams and he gave orders, although no one much paid attention to him; but his wife was a lady and the company honored him a good deal on that account."

William Graves wasn't the only one who found the James Reed arrogant. (Born in Ireland, Reed was a descendant of Polish nobility.) No doubt Reed was a strong leader, but his haughty style turned people off; that's why George Donner, the easygoing, elderly farmer, had been elected captain of the company, the "Donner Party."

Sierra Ahead
In early September the wagon train was running late as it trudged across Nevada to get over the Sierra, and supplies were getting dangerously low. Two men, Charles Stanton and William McCutchen, decided to ride ahead to Sutter's Fort (near present-day Sacramento) to obtain provisions from John Sutter.

Stanton was a single man of small stature, a shopkeeper recently from Chicago. "Big Bill" McCutchen, large and powerfully built, was traveling with his wife Amanda and their infant daughter, Harriet. George Donner and James Reed signed letters that requested help from Sutter and guaranteed payment.

After Stanton and McCutchen rode off to the west on their vital mission, the pioneers could only hope that the men would succeed. No one expected to see Stanton again; he had left no family behind with the company. Big Bill, however, was sure to return to his wife and only child.

Photo of Charles T. Stanton is from the Emigrant Trails Museum

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 numerous books on the region's history. For more of McLaughlin's work, visit www.micmacmedia.com.