![]() ![]() He wanted to promote white settlement in California, which he hoped would become an independent state, and also to profit from his travels. To further those goals, Hastings published The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California in 1845, a book that billed itself as a one-stop guide to traveling West. “In the process,” writes Donner Party historian Daniel James Brown, “he hoped to build a reputation, and perhaps a political career for himself in one of the new lands.” In the early 1840s, he spent time in the future states. Lansford Hastings was an ambitious attorney who saw the promise in California and Oregon years before the Gold Rush sent thousands of fortune-seekers out west. Hastings Cutoff, as it was known, was briefly touted as a better way for pioneers to get to Cal-even though its main promoter had never traveled the treacherous route. Virginia Reed and the other members of the Donner-Reed Party had been suckered into a supposed shortcut to California that had led them to disaster. ![]() ![]() A group of California-bound American emigrants known as the Donner Party, who after becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1847, resorted to cannibalism. ![]()
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