69: Judgement Day for the Donner Party (Finale)

An Old Timey Podcast

True Crime, History, Comedy

4.9 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 August 2025

⏱️ 117 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the finale of our series on The Donner Party, rescue groups head off for Truckee Lake and Alder Creek, hoping to save as many survivors as they could. For many members of The Donner Party, the rescue crews came too late. Some had died. Others were too depleted to make the journey back to safety.

Ultimately, of the 87 members of The Donner Party, 41 died. The survivors did their best to lead normal lives, but many of them struggled. They carried unspeakable trauma. They were judged. They faced prying questions. Through it all, they tried their best to settle in to the place they’d fought so hard to call home.

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
“Refurbished Castro-Breen Adobe offers visitors a glimpse into state history,” Gilroy Dispatch
“Lansford Hastings, the Donner Party, and the Civil War,” National Museum of Civil War Medicine

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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

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0:00.0	Hear ye, hear ye. You are listening to an old-timey podcast. I'm Kristen Caruso.
0:08.2	And I'm Norman Caruso. And on this episode, I'll be talking about the Donner Party. The finale.
0:15.0	Woohoo! The finale! Oh yeah. Lots of cheers. It's over. Everyone did great. No trauma.
0:23.2	Okay. Well, yeah, trauma wasn't invented yet. So in many ways, you're right.
0:28.5	Kristen, we actually got a message from the Trump administration about your most recent episode.
0:34.2	Oh, really?
0:34.8	The Donner Party series. Well, as you know, they've been going through the Smithsonian Museum
0:38.5	looking at all the exhibits. And they, they're not really happy with the exhibits on slavery.
0:45.3	Sure.
0:45.9	You're saying it's too sad. It's a real bummer. And they'd like them to maybe not talk about it so much.
0:53.4	And they listened to part four of the Donner Party, and they also thought, boy, that episode sure was a bummer.
0:59.1	And maybe we need to go back and edit it and make it more uplifting and fun and positive.
1:04.5	You know, I think if we just used the fart noise from the soundboard some more, then that episode would have been a lot more uplifting. So in a way, this is all your fault, Norm. Well, you just should have said so. I would have been, you know, spamming that sound all you want. There we go. You got to write into those scripts. You know, history books would be a lot shorter if we just skipped all the sad stuff. Yeah. So I think these are a lot of great ideas that we have to consider.
1:29.7	Well, here's what I say to them.
1:32.6	We will not shy away from the bad stuff.
1:34.9	And if you want to support a small, sexy, independent podcast that does look at both the good
1:40.0	and bad of history, head on over to patreon.com slash old-timey podcast.
2:00.9	Wow. Okay, Norm. Consider becoming a non-threatening fan. For just $5 a month, you'll get access to our monthly bonus episodes with full video and get to chitty chat in the Discord. You know, one of our loyal history host, Leslie did a typo, and she said you get to shitty chat in the Discord. And I like well sometimes we have some shitty conversations in there it's true it's true they're not
2:05.4	all bangers right but if you're ready to commit to us full time if you want to leave
2:09.9	your old life behind and start a new you get in on that ten dollar pig butter
2:14.7	investor tier you get bonus episodes sign card and stickers, early ad-free
2:18.7	video episodes, access to our trivia parties, 10% off all merch, and ad-free episodes of Kristen's
	...

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