Hastings cutoff was a tragedy

Every Californian knows the Donner Party’s unsuccessful struggle to get over the winter Sierra mountains of 1846 and 1847.  The party believed that taking the Hastings Cutoff would save them three hundred travel miles, but that was not the case. Hastings deceived pioneers. Hastings had never traveled the route, but he made bogus maps that many pioneers tried to follow, and he made money writing his map.  It was not a short cut.  Cannibalism and horror are the Donner party’s story because they believed Hastings. Continue reading “The ultimate deception” »