The Donner Party

Trapped in the Sierra Nevadas during the bitter winter of 1846, nearly 90 members of the Donner and Reed families longed for California's "Promised Land." But an untried shortcut became a death warrant for half of them victims of madness, death, and cannibalism. The program re-creates the Donner Party's journey from family journals, newspaper accounts, and interviews with historians and descendants.

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"Trapped in the Sierra Nevadas during the bitter winter of 1846, nearly 90 members of the Donner and Reed families longed for California's "Promised Land." But an untried shortcut became a death warrant for half of them victims of madness, death, and cannibalism. The program re-creates the Donner Party's journey from family journals, newspaper accounts, and interviews with historians and descendants."@en
"Chronicles the tale of the pioneer group that set out for California in the spring of 1846 and ended in disaster in the snows of the Sierra Nevada Mountains the following winter."
"Chronicles the tale of the pioneer group that set out for California in the spring of 1846 and ended in disaster in the snows of the Sierra Nevada Mountains the following winter."@en
"Uses family journals, newspaper accounts and interviews with historians and descendants of the party to recreate the drama of the ill-fated 1846 expedition to California in which the travellers were trapped by snow and forced into cannibalism to survive."
"This haunting film tells the story of the ill-fated part of pioneers and their doomed attempt to get to California in 1846. More than just a riveting tale of death, endurance and survival, the Donner Party's nightmarish journey penetrated to the very heart of the American dream at a crucial phase of the nation's "manifest destiny." Touching some of the most powerful social, economic and political currents of the time, this extraordinary narrative remains one of the most compelling and enduring episodes to come out of the West."