American Hauntings Dinner & Spirits

DINNER WITH THE DONNER PARTY

AMERICAN ODDITIES MUSEUM
Mineral Springs Hotel | Alton, Illinois
7:00 PM
$48 Per Person
Next Available Date: JANUARY 25, 2025

CLICK HERE FOR RESERVATIONS!

Join author Troy Taylor for another night of our “An Evening with…” series of events! This eerie evening will include a catered dinner, held at the American Oddities Museum. After dinner, author Troy Taylor will be presenting “Forlorn Hope: A Haunted History of the Donner Party,” a look at the brutal journey of the Donner-Reed Party from Illinois to California and the fateful winter in the Sierra Nevadas.

Discover the true story of the Donner Party, which left Springfield, Illinois, in the spring of 1846 and traveled by wagon across the country to the California. Most of us know how the story ends – with cannibalism in the mountains – but we don’t know the events that led them to that point, the horrific occurrences that left them stranded at Truckee Lake, the daring rescue attempts, the desperate starvation that led to the eating of human flesh, and finally, the hauntings they left behind.

Bring an appetite and don’t miss this special night!

Join us at the Mineral Springs in Alton, Illinois for another great event!

- Doors open at 6:00 PM / Dinner starts at 7:00 PM

- Events held at the Mineral Springs Hotel Located at 301 East Broadway in Alton, Illinois

- Limited number of guests for each event

- Private Event in the American Oddities Museum, which will open at 6:00 Pm for browsing by guests before dinner

- American Hauntings Bookstore located in the Museum so books will be available for purchase and can be autographed by Troy Taylor

an evening with the donner party
presented by troy taylor

"In prosecuting this journey," warned an 1849 guidebook to the West, "the emigrant should never forget that it is one in which time is everything."

It was the best advice that any emigrant to the West was given during the days of the wagon trains to Oregon and California. Time spelled success for most of them but doom for many others during that era. But no book could prepare them for the ordeals ahead of them.

Life on the trail was a story of an increasingly difficult adventure of failing food and water supplies and of bone-wrenching weariness and accumulating miseries of every sort. Emigrants pushed overland, perhaps as slowly as 15 miles each day, and many of them lost sight of the vision that had set them on the road in the first place. Their vision was replaced by only tragic signs of families that had preceded them -- the wolf-pawed graves of the dead, the rotting carcasses of mules and oxen, splintered wrecks of abandoned wagons, and once precious household items left behind after travel became too rough.

The long trail to the West, from the Missouri River to the West Coast, ran more than 2,000 miles, with constant detours for pasture and water. The distance in miles however, mattered less than the distance in time. It usually took about four and a half months to reach the Far West and the trip became a race against the seasons, in which timing made the difference between success and failure.

Late April or early May was the best time to depart, although the date had to be calculated with care. If the wagon train started too early in the spring, there would not be enough grass on the prairie to graze the cattle. On the other hand, a train that left after other trains had already departed would find campsites marked by trampled grass and fouled water holes. And if there was one thing that all the guidebooks to western travel agreed upon -- it was not to get caught in the mountain passes when winter came to the high elevations.

Such a dilemma would bring tragedy and disaster to even the most hardened group of travelers.

George Donner, his brother, Jacob, James Reed, and all their wives and children left Springfield for California, a place of new hope and bright futures. But the expedition was filled with mistakes from the beginning. They wagons were overloaded, they left Missouri weeks after other trains, but worst of all, they decided to leave the main trail in Wyoming and take an untested route to California.

They made the decision based on a guidebook that had been written by Lansford Hastings, a land promoter who wanted to boost emigration to California. It promised travelers they would save weeks by using a cutoff that took them through the Wasatch Mountains, down into the Salt Lake Valley, and across the Great Basin to join the standard California Trail along the Humboldt River, thus saving a distance of nearly 400 miles.

But when Hastings wrote it, he’d never even taken his own shortcut.

Even though mountain guides and experienced travelers warned them against it, the Donners and Reed took the cutoff, only to find that the route was impossible for wagons. They had to cut their own trail through the Wasatch, face a desert with no water, and then make it over the Sierra Nevadas before the heavy winter snowfalls.

They didn’t make. The Donner Party spent months trapped in the snow-covered mountains, slowly dying from cold and, of course, hunger. This is a story that we all think we know – but there’s much more to it than we hear about in school.

Find out about the violent events led to them being stranded at Truckee Lake, the daring rescue attempts over the mountains, the desperate starvation that led to the eating of human flesh – and the monster that acquired a taste for it.

And finally, discover the eerie hauntings that were left behind at the lake in the wake of the nightmare. It’s going to be a strange and unsettling night and you’re not going to want to miss it.