Fort Bridger

Utah

A rider carrying letters found the Donner Party on the trail, promising a better road to California and a guide waiting at Fort Bridger.

historicalmilitary

In 1845 a man named Lansford Hastings published a guidebook for emigrants heading west. It told them to leave the Oregon Trail at Fort Bridger, cut through the Wasatch Range, cross the Great Salt Lake Desert on an eighty mile stretch without water, and loop around the Ruby Mountains before rejoining the California Trail. Hastings sent a rider out along that route with letters for travelers. On the twelfth of July the Donner and Reed families were handed one. In it Hastings claimed he had worked out a new and better road to California, and said he would be waiting at Fort Bridger to guide them along the new cutoff. They took the route. History remembers them as the ill-fated Donner-Reed Party. The fort itself was four log cabins with flat dirt roofs behind an eight foot stockade, holding a blacksmith's forge, a store, and two families.

This is the first of 3 parts. The rest runs about 3 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
Hastings claimed to have "worked out a new and better road to California", and said he would be waiting at Fort Bridger to guide the emigrants along the new cutoff.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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