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It is September 1846 in what will one day be called Nevada.

They have come so far, these travelers, across thousands of miles of hard-packed prairies,

roiling rivers, rugged wilderness, even a desert that nearly cost them their lives.

But at last here they are, along this river, the Humboldt, with the mountains rising far ahead and the promise of California beyond.

The journey has taken a brutal toll.

They've lost oxen, equipment, supplies.

Some of them are dreadfully sick.

Every mile seems to come harder than the last. Weeks earlier they'd made a

fateful decision to abandon the established trail for a new route, one that promised to save time,

or so they hoped. Instead, it cost them weeks, and now time is the enemy. In the distance,

high in the Sierra Nevada,

for these travelers known as the Donner Party,

winter is already on its way.

Hi, everybody, Don Wildman here. I'm your host, and this is American History Hit. Welcome.

In 1846, in the midst of the Great Migration West, a group of pioneering families set out across the frontier to settle new lands and start new lives.

But a series of poor decisions, consequential delays, and misleading directions led them to a dreadful fate. It is a story that has become synonymous with doom and disaster in the American imagination.

It is the story of the Donner Party. What happened to these

unfortunate folks has become legend, but their ordeal was all too real, and it is detailed

and an incredible book entitled The Indifference Stars Above, the Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party,

...