A cautionary tale of human endeavor and failure, hope and despair, greed and ambition, The Donner Party chronicles the harrowing tale of the ill-fated emigrant group who set out for the promised land of California in the spring of 1846, only to meet with disaster in the snows of the Sierra Nevada the following winter. The five months the group spent trapped on the eastern side of the Sierra culminated in death and cannibalism. Using archival photographs, paintings, maps and memoirs, The Donner Party traces the emigrants’ 2500-mile journey from Illinois to California.