67: The Donner Party Falls Apart (Part 3)

An Old Timey Podcast

True Crime, Comedy, History

4.9 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2025

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

By the time they realized what they’d done, it was too late. Hastings Cutoff turned out to not be much of a cutoff at all. In fact, it was more time consuming and taxing than the regular California Trail. As a result, members of the Donner Party grew hungry. They grew thirsty. Their oxen, horses and dogs suffered. Some died. Some ran away. They ran low on time. People snapped at one another.

The group knew that they’d have to do something desperate to survive. So, they sent a few men ahead. They prayed the men would come back with help – before it was too late.

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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1:08.1	Hear ye, hear ye. You are listening to an old-timey podcast. I'm Kristen Caruso.
1:14.8	And I'm Norman Caruso. And on this episode, I'll be talking about the Donner Party, part three.
1:21.7	Kristen, I have, you know, I kind of know this story story and i have a feeling this episode is where
1:29.7	shit starts going bad yeah you know we had some fun in episodes one and two and
1:36.9	we had some fun i would be lying to you if i said that episode three was going to be just a fun little time for us.
1:48.0	It's going to get worse, folks, okay?
1:50.1	But wait, wait, just a minute.
1:51.9	Next week's episode, even worse.
1:55.2	Don't worry, it gets worse.
1:57.9	As Newfound Glory once said, it's all downhill from here.
	...

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