A Pretty Pass – Frank McNally on a grim tale of American pioneers

Even in late October, temperatures in Sacramento reach the mid-20s Celsius. A 90-minute drive away in the Sierra Nevada, however, they drop to low single figures.

Apart from your ears popping occasionally on the way up, the climb to Donner Pass has been so gradual, it’s hard to believe you are now 7,000 feet above sea level. Then you leave the car to find a thin layer of snow on the ground.

As you struggle to make sense of the signs for the various hiking trails, your nose and ears start to hurt and you’re sorry you didn’t bring a hat. A bubble jacket suddenly feels thin and so, when you walk, does the air.

But foreknowledge of the horrors visited on the first Europeans to cross this mountain top disinclines you to complain about minor discomforts. Besides, a short trek along one of the narrow, rocky paths soon rewards you with views that take what’s left of your breath away.

Mary Hannigan: Ireland are competing but they’re nowhere close thus far to pointing

---

Ken Early: Effortlessly elegant Ancelotti deservedly considered among the world’s best

---

Dublin constituency: Left-wing candidates face dog fight for the last seat

---

Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+: 10 of the best new shows to watch in June

---

According to the hiking guides, this is “the most historically significant square mile in California and maybe in the entire western United States”. That is probably overstating things a little.

But what is today the Donner Pass was the way over the last and greatest obstacle facing 19th-century settlers on the journey west. And its modern name commemorates the infamously grim experience of a group that found that out the hard way.

The Donner Party was named for George Donner and his family, German Americans who formed the largest part a contingent of California-bound migrants in the summer of 1846.

But there were 90 members in total, including Irish families too, most notably those of James Reed from Armagh and Patrick Breen of Carlow.

Some historians call them the Donner-Reed party. And the fact that Reed was not group leader may itself have been one of their mistakes. The mild-mannered German, who did not survive the trip, was a more popular choice than the arrogant Armagh man, who did.

Either way, like most west-bound pioneers of the time, they set out from Independence Missouri – the hub for travel on the Oregon Trail – that May.

The trek should have taken between four and six months. But two other bad choices delayed it fatally, into winter and beyond, ensuring those involved would suffer their own version of Black ‘47.

Their worst decision was to fall for the claims of Lansford Hastings, an explorer then promoting a supposed new short cut to California. The “Hastings Cut-off”, through the Wasatch Mountains and across the Great Salt Lake Desert, promised to save time and effort, while Hastings himself would be around to lead them through any difficulties.

It didn’t and he wasn’t. The effort of cutting a road through the mountains and then trudging across the salt desert, turned glue-like by rising moisture, added a month to their journey. It also left them so exhausted that they then lost another week in recovery, before attempting the Sierra Madre.

In the meantime, the snows came early and heavy, dooming all efforts to cross the summit and trapping the main group in the mountains for 111 days.

There followed a gradual descent into starvation. Desperate families took to eating hides that had initially been used for warmth: in one case as a rug, in another as the roof of a makeshift cabin. After that, as people died, survivors resorted to human flesh.

Breen kept a diary of the ordeal, although he, his wife, and their seven children all survived. This was attributed then and later to food hoarding. His diary insists they had nothing to spare.

Reed, meanwhile, had been banished in October after knifing a man to death in one of the fights their rising desperation provoked. Threatened with hanging, he agreed to go on ahead alone. It was risky, but freed of wagons and other encumbrances, he reached California by late October and tried to raise help.

First, winter prevented a rescue, then the ongoing Mexican-American War, in which he briefly fought. Finally, in February, the first of several expeditions set out to save what remained of the party.

“A more revolting or appalling spectacle I never witnessed”, wrote one of the army relief team of the cabins where some of the dead and living were finally found. The commanding officer, a General Kearny, ordered all traces of the site burned.

Almost half the original group died, including most members of a Murphy family. Only the Breens and Reeds survived without loss.

Reed went on to thrive in California, first as an orchard farmer (an Armagh speciality). Then he struck gold and after that became a property developer. It was on his land that part of what became San Jose now stands. To this day, several of the city’s streets are named after members of his family.