Ordeal By Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party

In 1846, the nation was turning 70. Herman Melville and Walt Whitman were 27, Lincoln was 37. The first telegraph lines were up and humming. California was still part of Mexico, but already faint parallel lines—wheel tracks left by emigrant wagon trains—marked the California Trail. Close to half a million emigrants would cross the plains before completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, but in July, 1846, there were only 800 Americans in California, and the routes across the Continental Divide and the Sierra Nevada were not yet well established. It was on the 20th of that month that the Donner Party set out for California from Little Sandy Creek, Wyoming—enough time, they thought, to cross the Sierras before the winter snows fell.

Eighty-seven men, women and children set out on the journey, and their tragic fate constitutes one of the most gripping and chilling chapters in the exploration and settlement of the American West. Much has been written over the years about the Donner Party—and a powerful documentary film, Simple Justice, was made by Ric Burns in 1993 and shown on PBS—but George Stewart’s spell-binding and compassionate narrative, Ordeal by Hunger, published initially in 1936, remains the gold standard. In his introduction to our edition, James D. Houston writes: "Sixty-five years after its first publication, this remarkable narrative still stands as the definitive account, giving dramatic life to a haunting and emblematic tale."

Though there is horror and tragedy in this story, there are also acts of courage and selflessness. It is a powerful human drama. As the author puts it, the story tells "what human beings may achieve, endure, and perpetrate in the final press of circumstance."

In addition to James Houston’s authoritative, new introduction, we have incorporated new illustrations and maps, aided in this effort by many organizations, most especially The Bancroft Library of The University of California, Berkeley.