California's Golden Trail

A tour of the historic transcontinental route reaps great experiences for heritage travelers.

- CANDY MOULTON

When the Mormon Battalion ended a nearly 2,000-mile march from the Missouri River to Santa Fe to enter the small settlement at San Diego on January 28, 1847, they were not even close to near the end of their travels through the West. Their involvement with the Mexican America War, as a part of the Army of the West led by Stephen Watts Kearny, had established the Southwest as part of America, and now in Alta California, they would be involved in key events that would really put California on the map.

Some members of the Mormon Battalion, once released from their duty, started heading north and east. They intended to join their families, whom they had left at the Missouri River at Winter Quarters-Florence, Nebraska-the previous year. That spring of 1847, Brigham Young and a vanguard group of Mormons set off from their winter camping place, forging what would become the Mormon Pioneer Trail. They reached the Great Salt Lake Valley by late July and established a new home base. The Pioneer Company was followed by their families.

A year earlier, a wagon train had traveled west to Fort Bridger, and there decided to follow a guidebook written by Lansford Hastings. They were headed to California as well and would take a shortcut across the Wasatch, and then the Great Salt Lake desert before Nevada and the rugged mountain range of the Sierra Nevada. Led by George Donner and Jacob Reed, this group made some serious miscalculations in their travel (not to mention the fact that some of their wagons were ridiculously heavy and they spent much of their time arguing among themselves). The Donner Party reached the eastern foot of the mountains later than expected and became stranded by winter storms. Their error in travel was deadly for most of the party; some survived but only after enduring horrendous conditions- even to the point of eating each other in one of the best documented episodes of cannibalism in American history.