SFGate.com - Full Article
Everyone knows the Donner Party. These are the people who came before. By Julie Brown Davis, Mountain Towns Editor
Sep 28, 2025
It was late fall in 1844 when a group of pioneers, horses, oxen and wagons arrived on the shore of a beautiful lake embedded below the wall of the Sierra Nevada. Snow had already accumulated on the ground. River crossings were ice cold. The animals were weary and ragged. But the group had hope. They’d already traveled for months, walking day after day alongside the wagons. Upon reaching the Sierra Nevada, they knew they were close to the Sacramento Valley, a destination that had lured them across the continent, but cold temperatures and shorter days were a foreboding reminder that time was not on their side.
This was the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party, the first European Americans to cross the Sierra Nevada with wagons. All 52 people survived the journey to California, including two infants who were born on the westward journey.
“They were the original pioneers that proved that you could move wagons over the Sierra Nevada,” said David Antonucci, a Tahoe historian and author...
Read more here:
https://www.sfgate.com/renotahoe/article/stephens-townsend-murphy-sierra-nevada-california-21057626.php
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