A Map To Nowhere

A Map to Nowhere

Losing your way can be fatal. George found that out the hard way. This dirt-poor farmer, with dreams of striking it rich, was in Springfield, Illinois, the day fast-talking James Reed held a crowd spellbound with tales of fabulous riches in California. Reed ended with a rousing challenge: “Come on, boys! You can have as much land as you want without it costing you anything.”

Reed’s promise of free land would cost everything for those who followed him, including George and his family. A lineup of wagons rolled out of Independence, Missouri, and by the time they arrived in Fort Laramie, they were already behind schedule. It was now July, and the wagons still had to cross a brutal stretch of mountains and badlands before winter set in. That’s when Reed pulled out a book with a map that promised to cut some four hundred miles off the route to California, even though its author had never seen the trail. Neither had anyone else. Reed’s map was based on rumor and legend. Frontiersmen warned that it was a fraud. But Reed convinced eighty-six people to join him. George was among those most enthusiastic. Maybe that’s why the group elected him as their captain.

Their gamble proved disastrous. Heavy wagons had to be dragged over the rugged Wasatch Mountains and then across the Great Salt Lake Desert. By the time George’s party found their way back to the California Trail, it was the end of September. Their “shortcut” had taken twenty-five days longer than the normal route. Weeks behind schedule and short on food, they reached California in late October.

The weary party might have made it up that last stretch of the Sierra Nevada Mountains had they not been hit by a freak blizzard. It was the first in a series of massive snowstorms leading to the worst winter in California history. The marooned party ate the last of their oxen, only to face five more months trapped. A desperate group, calling themselves the Forlorn Hope, set out for Fort Sutter on crudely fashioned snowshoes. Less than half of them made it.

Four search parties were turned back by blizzards before a handful of survivors were finally rescued in the spring of 1847. The rescuers were appalled to discover the grisly remains of half-eaten corpses. The survivors confessed that they had stayed alive by eating the frozen bodies of the dead. These reports of cannibalism became the fodder for sensational newspaper stories across a horrified nation.

George was not one of those eaten. But it would have only been a matter of time. This dreamer and schemer was found dead and half-frozen on his bed. Some 165 years later, history still recoils in horror at George’s last name, Donner. His notorious name is indelibly etched in the history of the Old West. The bizarre story of the Donner Party is a sobering reminder of what can happen when people opt for the shortcut. The promise of a faster and easier way often leads to long delays. Bestselling author Orrin Woodward makes a lot of sense when he says this:

There are many shortcuts to failure, but no shortcuts to true success.

There is a way which seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.

Proverbs 14:12, WEB