68: The Donner Party Resorts to Cannibalism (Part 4)

An Old Timey Podcast

History, True Crime, Comedy

4.9 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2025

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

By the winter of 1846, the Donner Party found themselves in the exact scenario they’d been dreading. They were trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, pummeled by snowstorms. Their food supply dwindled. They knew that if they stayed put, they’d all be doomed. So, a group of men, women, and children set off to get help. They thought their journey would last six days. They thought wrong.

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

Are you enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Then please leave us a 5-star rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts!

Are you *really* enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Well, calm down, history ho! You can get more of us on Patreon at patreon.com/oldtimeypodcast. At the $5 level, you’ll get a monthly bonus episode (with video!), access to our 90’s style chat room, plus the entire back catalog of bonus episodes from Kristin’s previous podcast, Let’s Go To Court.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hear ye, hear ye.
0:03.2	You are listening to an old-timey podcast.
0:06.7	I'm Kristen Caruso.
0:08.2	And I'm Norman Caruso.
0:09.6	And on this episode, I'll be talking about the Donner Party.
0:13.2	Part four!
0:14.7	Kristen, do you want to tell the folks what you got mad at me about?
0:18.3	No, shut up.
0:19.5	Shut up.
0:19.8	Oh, God.
0:20.4	Shut up. Norman? Hmm? about? No, shut up. Shut up. Oh, God. Shut up.
0:21.4	Norman?
0:21.9	Norman?
0:23.6	If you say this.
0:27.4	I was getting the cameras ready.
0:29.5	Uh-huh.
0:29.9	And, you know, Kristen's camera, it's a good shot.
0:33.3	Everything was looking in focus.
0:34.7	Color was right.
0:35.5	Mm-hmm.
0:36.0	And I just said,
0:41.6	Chrissy P on camera one, and Kristen lost it.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from An Old Timey Podcast, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of An Old Timey Podcast and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.