Expedition Ledger — a mostly-true, mostly-text survival game
Spring, 1846. You've come to St. Louis to outfit a wagon train bound for California — nearly two thousand miles, most of it on foot. History already knows how this goes, but every route ends with one of our 6 flavors of Donner Party Provisions Hot Sauces. See which one becomes yours.
Best Runs
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Party
10/10
Day
1
Food
100
Health
100
Morale
100
Your journey matched
Best Runs
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The Real Roster — 1846–47
Of the roughly 87 people who made the crossing, around 40 died between May 1846 and April 1847 — exact counts vary by source — through illness, accidents, starvation, and violence. Your wagon in this game is fictionalized — this record is kept separate from the gameplay on purpose.
Reed family — James, Margaret, and their four children, with hired teamsters. One of only two families to come through with everyone alive.
Breen family — Patrick, Margaret, and their seven children. The other family to survive completely intact.
Donner families — the households of brothers George and Jacob Donner, roughly two dozen people combined. Both patriarchs died; several of their children were orphaned.
Graves, Murphy, Eddy, and McCutchen families — mixed outcomes, ranging from a few losses to some of the heaviest of the crossing.
The Dead
Spring 1846 — before the mountains
Sarah Keyes — May 29 (tuberculosis, already ill before departure)
Late August 1846 — the Great Salt Lake
Luke Halloran — August 25 (tuberculosis, buried at the edge of the salt desert)
October 1846 — the desert and the Humboldt
John Snyder (stabbed by James Reed in an argument, Oct 5) · Hardkoop (an old man put out of Lewis Keseberg's wagon when he could no longer walk; the party refused to turn back for him — Oct 8) · Wolfinger (killed by traveling companions — the circumstances were never settled) · William Pike (accidental gunshot)
December 1846 – January 1847 — snowbound; the Forlorn Hope
Baylis Williams (malnutrition) · Jacob Donner, Samuel Shoemaker, Joseph Rhinehart, James Smith, Charles Burger (exposure and starvation at the lake and creek camps) · Charles Stanton, Antoine, Patrick Dolan, Franklin Graves, Lemuel Murphy, Jay Fosdick (died with the Forlorn Hope snowshoe party) · Luis and Salvador (the two guides who joined partway — shot by starving members of the snowshoe party as the two neared death)
January–February 1847 — as rescue began
John Denton (exposure and starvation) · Milt Elliott · Landrum Murphy · James Eddy and Margaret Eddy (William Eddy's young children) · Eleanor Eddy · Augustus Spitzer · Catherine Pike · Harriet McCutchen · William Hook (died at Bear Valley during the first relief's return)
March–April 1847 — even after help arrived
George Donner, Tamsen Donner · Elizabeth Graves and her son Franklin Graves Jr. · Isaac, Lewis, and Samuel Donner (three of Jacob Donner's young sons, at the camps and on the second relief's retreat)
April 1847 — a grim postscript
The final relief expedition, led by William Fallon, was contracted up front as a salvage operation — under a formal agreement, its members were entitled to keep half of whatever Donner money and property they recovered as payment. What became of the rest is still disputed; one member of the party was accused of hiding some of it, and was reportedly threatened with a noose over it. Whatever the truth, the orphaned Donner children inherited little of their father's estate.
