What is the donner party about?

Answer 1

The Donner Party is the name of a wagon train that set out for California in the spring of 1846. They experienced many difficulties along the way and were belated. When they reached the Sierra Nevada, they were trapped by an early snowfall and had to spend the winter in the Rocky Mountains. They ran out of food and several starved to death. Some of the emigrants ate their dead companions to stay alive. Between February and April 1847 rescue parties from California brought the survivors out. The story of the Donner party spread back to east so the the number of people going out to west dropped incredibly. But in 1849, James Marshall found gold in a mountain in California. The news spread very quickly to east and the number of people going out to west increased dramatically. The people who went to California to find gold were called the 49ers and the event was called the California Gold Rush.