65: The Donner Party: An American Tragedy (Part 1)

An Old Timey Podcast

True Crime, History, Comedy

4.9 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2025

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode kicks off our coverage of an infamous American tragedy – the Donner Party.

In the mid-1800’s, a group that would later be known as the Donner Party set out West in search of a better life. The California and Oregon Trails were notoriously tough. The journey was dangerous, unpredictable and long. So, when an irresponsible, self-serving douchebag named Lansford Hastings began touting a shortcut to California, members of the Donner Party were intrigued. Could there really be a faster way to California?

Tragically, Lansford was full of shit.

Remember, kids, history hoes always cite their sources! For this episode, Kristin pulled from:
“The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride,” by Daniel James Brown
“The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny,” by Michael Wallis
The documentary, “The Donner Party”
“How the Donner Party was doomed by a disastrous shortcut,” by Erin Blakemore for History.com
“Lansford Hastings, the Donner Party, and the Civil War,” by Elizabeth Eisenstark for the National Museum of Civil War Medicine
“The deadly temptation of the Oregon Trail shortcut,” by Laura Kiniry for atlasobscura.com

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hear ye, hear ye. You are listening to an old timey podcast. I'm Kristen Caruso.
0:08.0	And I'm Normie C. And on this episode, I'll be talking about the Donner Party.
0:13.0	Ooh, one of my favorite stories from American history. Also one of the saddest. Yeah. I've just gotten over my
0:24.7	depression from my last topic, Kristen, and now you come swinging in with the Donner Party.
0:30.2	I tried to warn people, and honestly, everyone, I'm sorry. Norm covered the bath school disaster,
0:37.4	which you did a great job. It was just
0:40.0	like the saddest thing I'd ever heard in my life. And the whole time I was thinking, my God,
0:46.4	next, I'm covering the Donner Party. And folks, if you're like, Donner Party, that sounds familiar.
0:51.8	I don't know much about it. Ho! Ho! Are you in for a depressing little treat? This episode's going to be fun, though. Okay. Which I know sounds bizarre, but it really, we're building up to something. So the first couple episodes, not so bad. We're building up to the melancholy. It's Melancholy Month here on an old-timey podcast. Melancholy is a really
1:12.7	nice word for it. Norm, do you have a plug for our Patreon? I do, Kristen. Do you know what this
1:18.7	Friday is? Do you know what's happening this Friday? No. It's Colorado Day. That's not a, okay.
1:24.9	It's the anniversary of when Colorado was admitted as a state. Okay. It's an actual holiday. Okay. Well, yeah. Congratulations, Colorado. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, you listeners out there might be thinking, holy shit. I can't believe I didn't know about Colorado Day. I've got to plan a celebration. Uh-huh. Old-timey podcast.
1:46.4	How can I thank you for reminding me?
1:48.5	Well, I'll tell you how you can thank us.
1:54.6	Why not support this small, sexy, independent podcast over on patreon.com slash old-timey podcast.
2:01.8	Norm, I'll be honest, I had no idea how the hell this was going to relate back to our Patreon, but boy, did you bring it swinging back in?
2:08.1	I can literally relate anything back to our Patreon. Give me something, and I'll tie it to the Patreon. She's cassidia. I'm sorry, that was highly redundant. Casidia. Folks, do you love
2:16.1	casadias? Do you want to talk to other people about casidias?
2:20.2	We have a food server in our Discord, and you can access that Discord by going to patreon.com
2:26.5	slash old-timey podcast, where you'll find other cassidia fans.
2:30.6	For just $5 a month, you'll get access to our monthly bonus episodes with full video and get to chitty chat about cassidias in the Discord.
2:38.2	But if you're ready to commit, if you want to go all the way with us, baby, get on that $10 pig butter investor tier, you get bonus episodes, sign card and stickers, early ad-free video episodes, access to our monthly trivia parties, 10% off all merch,
	...

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