William Swain of Youngstown, New York wrote to his brother and wife Sabrina along his journey to the gold fields in 1849. that could be mentioned" (Ward and Duncan 1996:129). Destruction of property along the road was beyond description, consisting of wagons, harness, tools of every description, provisions, clothing, stoves, cooking vessels, powder, lead, and almost everything, etc. Dust very disagreeable, but not to compare with the stench from dead carcasses which lie along the road, having died from fatigue and hunger. That one would be scarcely ever out of sight of some train. He returned within a month in awe at what he had witnessed. Lee set out from Salt Lake City going east on the California Trail. Due to the necessity of lightening the load, gold-seekers discarded goods along the trail. While heavily traveled, the California Trail proved to be extremely difficult and even fatal for many travelers to cross.įort Laramie was the last stop for many forty-niners before ascending the Rocky Mountains. Unlike other pioneers of the day, many of the forty-niners scarcely prepared for the journey. In addition to the Rockies, these emigrants faced the barren deserts of Nevada and the imposing Sierra Nevada Range. California emigrants faced the greatest challenges of all the pioneer emigrants of the mid-19th century. Some traveled by ship around the tip of South America or traversed the Isthmus of Panama, but most gold-seekers found passage on the Oregon Trail the safest, most cost effective, and timely means of getting to the goldfields in California (Dary 2004:203). Some received news of the discovery early on in 1848 and started the journey west however, many did not receive the confirmatory witness until it was too late in the year to cross the plains. However, the article received little attention until the paper's publisher, Samuel Brannan walked down the streets of San Francisco, waving a bottle of gold in the air and shouting "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!" (Dary 2004:188). The first printed notice of the discovery was made in the Californian on March 15, 1848.
Sutter and Marshall tried to keep the discovery quiet, but the news leaked out within weeks of the discovery (National Park Service). To his surprise, Marshall discovered a gold nugget on January 24, 1848, while at the saw mill. Marshall chose a location on the south fork of the American River, only 40 miles from Sutter's home. In 1848, Sutter assigned James Marshall to build a saw mill. John Sutter, a Swiss businessman, immigrated to California in 1839 to become an agricultural success. Governor Pico had no idea of the hordes of gold-seekers that would yet flood into California in the ensuing years. What that astonishing people will next undertake, I cannot say" (Ward 88). Already have the wagons of that perfidious people scaled the almost inaccessible summits of the Sierra Nevada, crossed the entire continent and penetrated the fruitful valley of the Sacramento. In 1845, California's governor, Pio Pico, stated, "We find ourselves threatened by hordes of Yankee emigrants.
Despite the tragic episode of the Donner-Reed Party, approximately 1,400 emigrants successfully arrived in California in 1846 (Dary 2004:167). A rescue party did not reach the survivors until the spring of 1847 (National Park Service). Forty of the eighty-seven settlers died that winter due to the extreme cold and starvation. After eating all of the livestock and hides by mid-December, some resorted to eating the deceased. The settlers were trapped in mountains for four months. The wearied Donner-Reed Party reached the Sierra Nevada's in October, just in time for the first severe snowfall of the year.
Hastings' haphazard cutoff cost the settlers more time, livestock, supplies, and lives than popular routes would have taken. The group, having started west late in the year, were enticed by Lansford Hastings to take an alternate and supposedly more timely route to California. The Donner-Reed Party was one such group who traveled from Illinois Apwith 87 travelers en route to California. The California Trail is most notably associated with the goldrush of 1949, however, many pioneers traveled to California before the rush.
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