One hundred and sixty-plus years ago this week, members of the Donner Party were busy building shelters at both Donner Lake and in the Alder Creek Valley north of present-day Truckee.

Several times during the first week of November the pioneers had tried to cross the snow-covered pass and press on to Sutter's Fort, but each attempt failed.

Almost
During one of their efforts to reach the pass, the emigrants grew so weary from battling the deep snow that they collapsed from exhaustion. Charlie Stanton and one of the Miwok Indian guides from Sutter's Fort struggled on to the (Donner) summit where the snow was chest deep. Stanton reached the pass where he could see that traveling farther west would be difficult.

He returned to the others to encourage them to push on with him over the summit. Someone had set a dead tree on fire and everyone huddled around it for warmth. No one would budge. Once darkness settled over them, they lay down wrapped in their blankets for the night. In a few hours it began to snow again and by morning they were buried in it. When the emigrants awoke that morning and saw the new snow, they gave up and reluctantly retreated back down to Donner Lake.

The pioneers at the lake split into small groups and spent the next week building shelters and preparing as best they could for an extended stay. The Breen family moved back into the deserted cabin built by the Stephens Party of 1844, which had successfully crossed the pass with wagons. It was a small, rectangular structure, twelve by fourteen feet and seven to eight feet high. Built of pine saplings, and roofed with pine brush and rawhides, there was a single room and chimney at one end.

Louis Keseberg built a lean-to shed against the side of the Breen cabin for his family. William Eddy, a 28-year-old carpenter and carriage maker from Illinois, borrowed some tools and led the construction of another log cabin. Well-built and rectangular in shape, the shelter was about 25 feet long, eight feet high, and 18 feet wide.

Murphy Cabin Against a Rock
The cabin incorporated a large granite boulder for its west wall. To maintain stability and sustain a snow load, the cabin partially enclosed the rock and used it for support. Known as the Murphy cabin, Eddy, his wife Eleanor (25), and their two young children, James (3) and Margaret (1), shared the cabin with the Murphy family from Tennessee and Missouri. The Murphy family consisted of a widowed mother, Levinah (36), and her five children: John (15), Mary (14), Lemuel (12), William (11) and Simon (8). There were also two married daughters and their families: Sarah Ann (19) and her husband William Foster (30) and their child, George who was about four years old. The other daughter was recently widowed Harriet Pike (18) and her two children Naomi (2) and Catherine (1).

A third shelter was erected about one half mile east of the lake cabins to provide refuge for the Graves and Reed families. It was a double cabin, with two rooms separated by a center-dividing, log wall. There was a fireplace at each end of the structure and each room had its own doorway. The roof was nine feet high and constructed of logs covered with tree branches and dirt. Years later, William Graves said that each of the rooms was "about 16 feet square." None of the Donner-lake cabins had windows.

The twelve-member Graves family, originally from Marshall County, Illinois, had joined the Donner party at Fort Bridger. Franklin Ward Graves (57) and his wife Elizabeth (45) had eight children: Mary Ann (19), William (17), Eleanor (14) Lovina (12), Nancy (9), Jonathan (7), Franklin Ward Jr. (5) and Elizabeth (1). A married daughter, 21-year-old Sarah, and her husband Jay Fosdick (23), were traveling with them.

Over Half of Donner Party are Children
There were 81 emigrants trapped in the mountains at the two encampments, 59 at the lake and 22 at Alder Creek. Forty-four of them were hungry, frightened children.

Alder Creek Camp
The Alder Creek encampment, located about five miles northeast of Donner Lake, was a hectic scene during the early days of November 1846. The two Donner families and their hired help were bogged down by snow, injury, and fatigue, and they were separated from the main group on Donner Lake. The crash of George Donner's wagon and his subsequent injury by a glancing axe had halted their forward progress, so the Donners were forced to make camp in a protected grove at the junction of Alder and
Prosser creeks.



For the first eleven days of November the weather was cloudy and cool, with high temperatures near 40 degrees and rain and snow showers almost every day. Although there was initially little accumulation in the lower elevations east of Donner Pass, up on the summit above 7,000 feet, heavy snow was falling and piling up fast.

Editor's Note 1: This installment is #19 in an exclusive, weekly series tracing the actual experiences of the Donner Party as it worked its way into American history. Mark McLaughlin, weather historian, who lives on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe, wrote the series for Tahoetopia.