Today would have been an easy day, for us, but not for John Snyder 175 years ago on this route, as we will soon learn.
After breaking camp at chilly (30 degrees last night) but peaceful South Fork Recreation Area camp, we would be traveling in nice (63 degrees) sunny weather about 30 miles to the east, hugging the Humboldt River, to get to Moleen NV, which is where the Donner Party finally cut loose from the infamous Hastings Cutoff and the California Trail picked up. (Some shortcut that was – 100 miles longer and much, much tougher. Lansford Hastings got his due share of denunciations along the entire cutoff.) One hundred miles up the trail (that is, I-80 these days) we would be taking the exit for the little (180 people) community of Golconda, turning right onto highway 789 and driving five miles along Midas Road to just before it crosses over the Humboldt River. At that point we would be turning right onto an often black-fly-infested dirt road, driving 5.6 miles along the Humboldt River, as the below map shows. Thank goodness it is not raining today or we would be driving in a sea of mud, but not up to the tops of our wheels as the poor Donner Party encountered when they crossed the Great Salt Lake desert.
At this point, we would be looking spots that look like this:
Our goal for today would have been to find the alleged location of the burial site of John Snyder, shown by the arrows (graphic, not Indian) in the bottom photo above. Who, you ask, is John Snyder? Well, I will tell you. After crossing the Humboldt River, the pioneers came to a steep rocky hill (top photo above) they had to cross. Most of the wagons were double-teamed with oxen, but not the one driven by Snyder, a teamster for the Graves family . When Snyder's oxen became entangled with those pulling Reed's family wagon, Snyder starting beating his exhausted oxen. Reed rode up to Snyder’s wagon on horseback and they then got into a verbal altercation to stop Snyder from beating his oxen. Snyder lashed out with his bullwhip handle and struck Reed in the head. Reed defensively responded to Snyder's anger by pulling out his large hunting knife. (Wouldn’t any of us have done the same?) Reed's wife, Margaret (remember, her beloved mom died back in Alcove Springs in what is now Kansas) tried to separate the men, but Snyder then hit her with his whip. After two more attacks by Snyder, Reed plunged his knife into Snyder's chest, killing him instantly. Snyder was quickly buried off to the side of the trail, as the pioneers were wont to do, sometimes burying them on the trail so the Indians could not disinter and then desecrate them. German immigrant Louis Keseberg (not a nice man, I understand) wanted to hoist the falling tongue of a wagon and hang Reed right there, but others intervened. Instead, Reed was banished from the wagon train and forced to leave his wife and four children behind and walk off into the wilderness (the first Into the Wild?) alone with no horse or rifle. (With friends like that, who needs enemies?) His daughter later rode off and gave him a horse and rifle. As it turned out, this was really for the benefit of the whole group because Reed made it to Fort Sutter and was instrumental in arranging for the first rescue parties months later to make it to now-Donner Lake to save the poor starving (well, all were not starving, as we now know) souls soon to be stranded there for the winter. (While I am in no position to take sides in this fight, I will anyway. I don’t think Snyder deserved to die, but as an animal activitist, my sympathies go to Reed. Lesson to be learned: don’t beat your animals)
My guess is that I would have be testing the Defender’s oxen-power capability by trying to get over that hill in the top photo myself.
For some odd reason, I took a particular interest in wondering where Snyder was buried. After hours of research, I came across this interesting article in the Overland Journal (click here) describing where his grave might be. Snyder, by the way, was killed six days from today 175 years ago on October 5th.
After paying our respects (or whatever) to the hapless Snyder, Donner and I would be saddling up and then moving an easy 67 miles down I-80 to Rye Patch Recreation Area to spend a comfortable night under clear but chilly (29 degrees) skies. ("I think a winter storm is coming," Tom Stoppard would be having George Donner saying at the end of his would-be play, The Coast of Dystopia.) So far, except for some rain in the first leg of our trip on the way to Springfield IL, there would have been no rain along the entire Donner Party Trail. Theh again, we would have covered it in two weeks, while it took the Donner Party five and a half months.
Tomorrow we would be bringing an end to our outward journey, at least for the journey of George and his brother, Jacob, their wives, and a number of their children, since all died over the next six months at Alder Creek camp near Donner Lake.
Ed and Donner
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