Donner Pass
Author | : John R. Signor |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 290 |
Release | : 1985 |
Genre | : Donner Pass (Calif.) |
ISBN | : |
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Author | : John R. Signor |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 290 |
Release | : 1985 |
Genre | : Donner Pass (Calif.) |
ISBN | : |
Author | : Robert A. Boyd |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 360 |
Release | : 2017-03-13 |
Genre | : |
ISBN | : 9780996713726 |
Disaster Is Brewing In Donner Pass...Winter in the High Sierras has always been a challenge, but this time is different. Global warming has spawned an endless series of blizzards the likes of which have never been seen before. Even the proud Union Pacific is reeling from the onslaught.But the relentless storms and equipment breakdowns are only the beginning. They face a crisis at Donner Summit: a passenger train wrecked in the most dangerous, inhospitable terrain in all of railroading.The railroad men, exhausted and short of equipment, must brave bitter cold and white-out conditions to rescue the survivors, in a raging blizzard, with the real danger of avalanches striking at any moment. More than five hundred lives hang in the balance...*****Here is the story of the unsung heroes of modern railroading - the Maintenance of Way - who keep the lines open under the worst conditions, and who uphold the time honored tradition that the trains will always get through.
Author | : Edwin Bryant |
Publisher | : IndyPublish.com |
Total Pages | : 500 |
Release | : 1849 |
Genre | : Fiction |
ISBN | : |
Author | : Ethan Rarick |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | : 304 |
Release | : 2008-02-04 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0198041500 |
In late October 1846, the last wagon train of that year's westward migration stopped overnight before resuming its arduous climb over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, unaware that a fearsome storm was gathering force. After months of grueling travel, the 81 men, women and children would be trapped for a brutal winter with little food and only primitive shelter. The conclusion is known: by spring of the next year, the Donner Party was synonymous with the most harrowing extremes of human survival. But until now, the full story of what happened, what it tells us about human nature and about America's westward expansion, remained shrouded in myth. Drawing on fresh archaeological evidence, recent research on topics ranging from survival rates to snowfall totals, and heartbreaking letters and diaries made public by descendants a century-and-a-half after the tragedy, Ethan Rarick offers an intimate portrait of the Donner party and their unimaginable ordeal: a mother who must divide her family, a little girl who shines with courage, a devoted wife who refuses to abandon her husband, a man who risks his life merely to keep his word. But Rarick resists both the gruesomely sensationalist accounts of the Donner party as well as later attempts to turn the survivors into archetypal pioneer heroes. "The Donner Party," Rarick writes, "is a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous. Often, the emigrants displayed a more realistic and typically human mixture of generosity and selfishness, an alloy born of necessity." A fast-paced, heart-wrenching, clear-eyed narrative history, A Desperate Hope casts new light on one of America's most horrific encounters between the dream of a better life and the harsh realities such dreams so often must confront.
Author | : Michael Wallis |
Publisher | : Liveright Publishing |
Total Pages | : 575 |
Release | : 2017-06-06 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0871407701 |
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence Finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award A Publishers Weekly Holiday Guide History Pick “A book so gripping it can scarcely be put down.... Superb.” —New York Times Book Review "WESTWARD HO! FOR OREGON AND CALIFORNIA!" In the eerily warm spring of 1846, George Donner placed this advertisement in a local newspaper as he and a restless caravan prepared for what they hoped would be the most rewarding journey of a lifetime. But in eagerly pursuing what would a century later become known as the "American dream," this optimistic-yet-motley crew of emigrants was met with a chilling nightmare; in the following months, their jingoistic excitement would be replaced by desperate cries for help that would fall silent in the deadly snow-covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada. We know these early pioneers as the Donner Party, a name that has elicited horror since the late 1840s. With The Best Land Under Heaven, Wallis has penned what critics agree is “destined to become the standard account” (Washington Post) of the notorious saga. Cutting through 160 years of myth-making, the “expert storyteller” (True West) compellingly recounts how the unlikely band of early pioneers met their fate. Interweaving information from hundreds of newly uncovered documents, Wallis illuminates how a combination of greed and recklessness led to one of America’s most calamitous and sensationalized catastrophes. The result is a “fascinating, horrifying, and inspiring” (Oklahoman) examination of the darkest side of Manifest Destiny.
Author | : George R. Stewart |
Publisher | : Univ of California Press |
Total Pages | : 132 |
Release | : 2023-11-10 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0520349253 |
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1953.
Author | : Thomas Frederick Howard |
Publisher | : Univ of California Press |
Total Pages | : 250 |
Release | : 1998-06-30 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 9780520926219 |
A critical era in California's history and development—the building of the first roads over the Sierra Nevada—is thoroughly and colorfully documented in Thomas Howard's fascinating book. During California's first two decades of statehood (1850-1870), the state was separated from the east coast by a sea journey of at least six weeks. Although Californians expected to be connected with the other states by railroad soon after the 1849 Gold Rush, almost twenty years elapsed before this occurred. Meanwhile, various overland road ventures were launched by "emigrants," former gold miners, state government officials, the War Department, the Interior Department, local politicians, town businessmen, stagecoach operators, and other entrepreneurs whose alliances with one another were constantly shifting. The broad landscape of international affairs is also a part of Howard's story. Constructing roads and accumulating geographic information in the Sierra Nevada reflected Washington's interest in securing the vast western territories formerly held by others. In a remarkably short time the Sierra was transformed by vigorous exploration, road-promotion, and road-building. Ox-drawn wagons gave way to stagecoaches able to provide service as fine as any in the country. Howard effectively uses diaries, letters, newspaper stories, and official reports to recreate the human struggle and excitement involved in building the first trans-Sierra roads. Some of those roads have become modern highways used by thousands every day, while others are now only dim traces in the lonely backcountry.
Author | : Eliza Poor Donner Houghton |
Publisher | : IndyPublish.com |
Total Pages | : 474 |
Release | : 1911 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : |
Eliza Houghton (b. 1843) was the youngest child of George Donner, one of two Springfield, Illinois, brothers who organized the ill-fated California-bound emigrant party that bore their name. Eliza and her older sisters were rescued by relief parties that made their way to the stranded travellers at Donner Lake, but their parents perished, and the girls were left to make their way alone in the West. The expedition of the Donner party and its tragic fate (1911) begins with Mrs. Houghton's account of her childhood and the family's tragic overland journey, and rescue. She continues with her life as an orphan, first at Fort Sutter, and then with a family in Sonoma and with her older half-sister in Sacramento. She describes the impact of the gold rush and new immigration on the area, farm work and domestic work, and her own education in public schools and St. Catherine's Convent in Benicia. She writes at length of the emotional scars caused by contemporary rumors of cannibalism among the Donner Party and offers full accounts of Donner family history as well as the background of her husband, Samuel Houghton. An appendix contains several documentary sources for the history of the Donner Party.
Author | : Emily Rose Oachs |
Publisher | : Lerner Publications (Tm) |
Total Pages | : 44 |
Release | : 2016-08 |
Genre | : Donner Party |
ISBN | : 1512411159 |
Explore the tragedy of the Donner party, a group of American pioneers trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains during the harsh winter of 1846-1847. Cause-and-effect analysis reveals how the decisions made by leaders of the expedition ended in disaster.
Author | : Peter R. Limburg |
Publisher | : Ipswich Borough |
Total Pages | : 0 |
Release | : 1998 |
Genre | : Donner Party |
ISBN | : 9781890988005 |
Challenging readers to think about what they would do under the same circumstances, Deceived tells the true story of the infamous Donner Party, stranded in the Sierra Nevadas during a brutal winter, who resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. Includes maps especially created for this volume. Photos.