American Experience (TV Series) The Donner Party (1992) User Reviews

Dismal but very well done.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 25 September 2011]

The infamous story of the Donner Party is an interesting but VERY depressing event from American history. A group of very ill-informed pioneers heading to California made some unwise decisions along the way--and became stranded in the mountains. Of the 87 people in this group, when they were finally rescued about a year later, only 46 survived. And, when the story of HOW they survived by eating the flesh of their dead comrades, the story hit the newspapers and became almost legendary.

This episode of "The American Experience" is exactly what you'd expect. Expert narration (in this case by David McCullough), extensive use of vintage photos, really nice music, various interviews and historical recreations help to tell the story. The length of the show (about an hour and a half) was quite lengthy--and tended to make the story drag on and heightened the extreme length of the ordeal. This is not a complaint--just an observation about the extreme detail the story takes. Now you should definitely know, it is a VERY depressing and awful story, but is, in a way, an interesting tale of endurance and perseverance. Well worth seeing--but probably NOT a particularly good episode for kids to see! Creepy but very informative!

Interesting Piece of History

[kellyq12 · 7/10 · 3 March 2022]

A slow moving documentary that pulls from original source material (narration is typically letters and journals written by Donner Party members). The Donner Party's story is fascinating and to keep it to a 2 hour doc, some details obviously had to be omitted, but this film did a good overall job of hitting the main points. The mood and tone was well done too, capturing the pioneer spirit but also the harshness and challenges of the endeavor and the bleakness of their eventual predicament. It resorted to some sensationalism at the end with regards to the cannibalism that I think takes away from the hardship and trials that so many of this party endured and SURVIVED, which is truly incredible.

Excellent documentary of the triumphs & horrors of history's most famous wagon train to California.

[rethausa · 10/10 · 11 September 2000]

THE DONNER PARTY is an excellent, engrossing historical documentary about the famous (infamous?) Donner Party, who immigrated to California from Illinois in 1846-47. Ric Burns uses narration by David McCollough, comments by historians, still photos from the period & of individuals, diary excerpts read by noted actors, spectacular film of areas travelled by the Donner Party, and moving music that fits the storyline. As a high school history teacher (I've shown this film each year for the past 7 years) I appreciate Burns'information about Manifest Destiny & the pioneer spirits' need to move westward. Details about the conditions endured by the Party aid in understanding the experience of all those who travelled west on wagon trains (though the Donners et al do have their own unique experiences).

The situation of those trapped in the snowy Sierra Nevada during the winter of 1846-47 does not need "gruesome" exaggerations to keep a captive audience; the testimony of survivors more than adequately tell the horrendous story. I have to admit, some 16 & 17-year-olds find parts of the 90 min. film a bit slow. But they certainly express interest in the hardships endured, the choices that must be made to survive or die, and the determination to endure insurmountable hardships by so many pioneers. I also find Burns' inclusion of what happened to some survivors after their rescue to be quite interesting. I can't say this is real "pleasure-viewing" material, but it is certainly informative & extremely well-made.

Important Piece of California History

[PeachHamBeach · 19 July 2002]

I love stories of people and how they survive terrible hardships while making some kind of journey. In the 1840s, California was a sparkling new territory that beckoned mid-Westerners with promises of a better more prosperous life. In 1846, two Illinois brothers named George and Jacob Donner, their wives and children, and several other families, along with hired hands, livestock, household effects and foodstuffs, left Illinois for Sacramento California. They traveled by canvas covered wagons hauled by oxen, following a guidebook published by a man named Hastings, who promised the travelers that the Oregon Trail was old news and that a shorter, easier route going straight across the plains states, East to West, was more practical and would be less miles to travel. The trouble is, Hastings never really traveled this route, so he went ahead of them to see how it really was, and it turns out that there were so many obstacles on the route that he might have felt foolish for publishing false information and afraid to tell the wagon-trainers the truth, so the Donners and the families who accompanied them on their trek to the West, were allowed to progress on this "cutoff" or shortcut. As soon as the Donner Party left the Oregon Trail and turned west-south-west, they encountered problem after problem after problem. I have read and watched many a story about people suffering in their travels, but the Donner Party suffered a million times more than anyone in history in my opinion. They found the road terribly obstructed by dense woods, rocks, boulders, and for a month, they had to pretty much cut the road with axes. Because of this month of delay, they were considerably behind schedule and winter was approaching. As if this wasn't enough, they encountered Indians who shot their cattle and killed a lot of their meat supply. They had to cross the salt plain west of the Great Salt Lake in Utah which took them five days instead of two as Hastings told them. Their wagon wheels sank into the quicksand there, and many familes had to pack their things into other families' wagons and leave their wagons in the desert. Many nearly died of thirst and when they finally reached the Sierras, George Donner's axle broke on his wagon and his family fell behind. While waiting for them to catch up, the rest of the party was horrified to find that the snow season had come early to the Sierra Nevadas, and when they tried to climb the summit, the snow was so deep that they could not make it. Already half starving because of their food supply being destroyed or exhausted, the Donner Party was forced to stay in the mountains all winter long, in makeshift log cabins and tents. Here the story becomes even more horrifying. They began to die from malnutrition and starvation. A group volunteered to climb the mountains wearing snowshoes and went through terrible nightmarish ordeals just to reach help. Many froze to death or died of hunger, and their comrades were forced to eat their remains just to keep from dying themselves. Back at Donner Lake, where the others waited for help, blizzard after bitterly cold blizzard piled more and more snow. Finally, the snowshoers found help, but not before nearly half of the 87 people in the party died of starvation or cold. A truly harrowing story, the story of the Donner party will remain one of the hugest tragedies in California history. As I said before, I really enjoy stories about people traveling with hardship, but those are mainly fiction stories. The very thought that this is a true story is chilling, yet at the same time, it is thrilling and inspiring.

Chilling & Haunting Masterpiece.

[AaronCapenBanner · 10/10 · 25 August 2013]

An episode of the PBS series "American Experience", this re-telling of the doomed expedition of the Donner and Reed families to migrate from Illinois to California in covered wagons in the years 1846-1847, only to find devastating disappointment, hardship, and bad luck as they get stuck in the Sierra Nevada Mountains during a record series of blizzards is so unexpectedly compelling, moving, and powerful, that it was worthy of being released as a feature film.

There is no gore or on screen violence at all, despite the grim and grisly details, this instead uses narrated excerpts from the diaries of the family members to tell the story, and a more effective narrative device could not have been found; modern horror film-makers could learn a great deal on how effective subtlety, light and shadow can be. It is quietly told, yet retains such dramatic impact that it may bring you to tears. Eerie, sweeping music score will leave you breathless. Ending line, "Remember, never take no cut offs, and hurry along as fast as you can." is devastating.

Highly recommended!

THE DONNER PARTY: An Ultimate American Tragedy

[virek213 · 10/10 · 8 February 2013]

PBS's long-running documentary series "The American Experience" had provided a huge mine for all who are deeply interested in our country's rich history. One aspect of that history is in the big westward migration of the mid-19th century that eventually led to the northwestern part of what was once Mexico coming under American control. And of all the stories of that part of our history, none has been as heartbreaking, poignant, or shocking as that of the Donner Party, that emigrant wagon train that, through several fatal mistakes, the biggest of which was taking a cut-off through the Utah mountains and the Great Salt Lake Desert, found itself stranded during the harsh winter of 1846-47 in the Sierra Nevada, only one hundred fifty miles short of their final goal: Sutter's Fort in Sacramento, California.

As documented by Ric Burns, brother of Ken Burns, THE DONNER PARTY recounts how two prominent families of Springfield, Illinois, led by James Reed and George Donner, decided to make that long 2500-mile track west to California in order to make a better life for themselves. With narration by David McCullough, and excerpts of diaries read by people like Eli Wallach, Amy Madigan, J.D. Cannon, and others, we get a sense of the roughness and danger of the cross-country journey, and how much more dangerous it got when the Reeds and the Donners made the catastrophic mistake of listening to the advice of an ambitious would-be "emperor" named Lansford Hastings and took a shortcut across rugged terrain that could only be accessible on horseback and certainly not in a wagon. The party lost almost an entire summer making that dangerous "shortcut" that actually turned out to be much longer and much more treacherous than the established path. And while they reached the foot of the Sierras in early October in what was thought to be enough time left to cross the pass that would eventually be named for them, they unfortunately got caught in an early blizzard, losing their race with the weather by one single day. What happened over the next five months in the Sierras remains one of the greatest tragedies ever experienced in the annals of human history.

Of course, the most notorious aspect of this entire story is the fact that many of the survivors were forced to resort to cannibalism; and that part of the story isn't ignored. But what the documentary also explores is the fact that so many of the men in that party perished, and that two-thirds of the women and children were able to make it out of there alive; that James Reed, who had been banished after having killed a teamster, found, much to his amazement, that his wife and four children had survived; and that nine snowstorms enveloped the mountains during that winter (the worst winter in the history of the Sierras), hindering the fourth and final rescue party by an entire month. Historians Joseph King, Wallace Stegner, Harold Schindler, and Donald Buck also comment on what the saga can teach us about the limits of human experience and can-do American optimism, and how it can be tripped up, fatally in the case of the Donner Party, by not listening to sage advice being given by those who knew better, including James Clyman, the mountain man who had advised his old friend Reed to take the established path to California and not take Hastings' cut-off.

What is most heartbreaking, of course, is that, when one comes down to it, the people in the Donner Party really weren't any different from us. They knew nothing more about the virgin territory they were stepping off into than those whom they followed; and while in hindsight it's easy to say that they should not have trusted the bogus statements of Lansford Hastings, who is to say that we wouldn't have acted any differently if we had been in their shoes at that time? It is a known fact that many of us take similar so-called "shortcuts" in our lives too, and those don't always work out either. All the best and worst of humanity was borne out during that long and terrible part of our history, and THE DONNER PARTY, as has been the case of every American Experience documentary, makes the case that, far from being mere heroes or villains, the participants were in many ways just like us. It was a story about America and humanity, and an historical lesson we can still learn from today in our 21st century.

A Modern Horror Classic

[kathryn_aegis · 10/10 · 25 December 2018]

Ric Burns documentary is based on diaries, correspondence and historical photographs. The diary entries are read by a cast of famous actors to a haunting classical score to relate the horrific series of events that befell the Donner Party. The story is well known, but this film draws the viewer into the events on a very personal level. As a result, this documentary has become well known to fans of the horror film genre.

The Donner Tragedy Helped To Preserve The Mormon Pioneers

[blue-7 · 10/10 · 13 May 2018]

I have great respect for the Donner Party and feel that they were heroes in helping the pioneer companies of the Mormon Pioneers in an unexpected way. The Donner company spent almost a month clearing the way to bring their wagons over the mountains into the Salt Lake valley. A year later when Brigham Young brought the first of the Mormon pioneers into the valley he was racing against time as they needed to be able to plant a crop in order to have food for those who would be living in the Salt Lake valley. It was late July when he arrived and it was because the Donner company had cleared the last major passage way that they were able to arrive in time to plant. Things had grown somewhat since the Donner's clearing but was much easier for Young's larger company to clear their way through. So I would honor the Donner company along with Brigham Young as being special people to this great pioneer episode. And this PBS special does an outstanding job of telling the story of one the great pioneer tragedies.