66: Warnings and Lies: The Deception of the Donner Party (Part 2)

An Old Timey Podcast

True Crime, History, Comedy

4.9 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2025

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Donner Party was at a crossroads. They’d made good progress on their journey to California, but they were still about a week behind schedule. Lansford Hasting’s new shortcut appealed to the worried group. But an experienced explorer warned them against it. The man told them that the shortcut might kill them.

They didn’t listen.

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	Here ye, hear ye.
0:03.2	You are listening to an old-timey podcast.
0:06.7	I'm Kristen Caruso.
0:08.3	And I'm Normie C.
0:09.6	And on this episode, I'll be talking about the Donner Party.
0:13.2	Part two!
0:14.5	Are we hitting the terrible shit in this episode?
0:17.5	Well, you know, it's not great, but it's not too bad.
0:20.3	Not bad. I mean, when you... They only eat one person in this episode. No, you know, it's not great, but it's not too bad. Not bad. I mean,
0:21.7	they only eat one person in this episode. No, no, no, no. It's just, um, this series,
0:29.0	wow, you really saved yourself there. I had to, yeah. This series is just going to get worse and
0:33.2	worse. I just, I feel like our listeners, our history hoes, are waiting with bated breath for the gruesome shit.
0:40.4	So always want to ask.
0:42.5	Yeah.
0:42.7	No, you can, this, this episode is, um, hmm, how do we put it?
0:50.5	This episode isn't all chuckles and giggles.
0:56.0	Okay.
0:56.7	But there will be some chuckles and some giggles on a chuck wagon.
1:03.0	Wow.
1:04.1	But before we get to all that, Norm, do you have a plug for us?
1:07.3	Yeah, I sure do.
1:08.8	Folks, I hope everyone had a happy Colorado Day last week.
	...

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