Hastings Cutoff

Hastings was trying to garner support from the government for his so-called shortcut to the West.

Hastings Cutoff claimed to shave two weeks off the journey time.

Lansford Hastings would not publish this emigrant's guide showing us the best route to California if he did not travel every step of it himself.

Problem was, he never traveled it himself, let alone with a trail of wagons.

Tomorrow, I turn my wagons to the Hastings Cutoff.

Now, who will follow?

George Donner's brother, James Reed, wrote in his diary on July 31st, 1846.

Hastings Cutoff is said to be a saving of 400 miles.

To attract settlers, he published a guidebook, The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California, in 1845, that described the trail to California in terms that were, to put it charitably, optimistic, and which included a description of a shortcut that would save emigrants approximately four hundred miles of travel.

The Hastings Cutoff, as it came to be known, bypassed the established Fort Hall route that went north through Idaho and instead cut directly west across the Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake Desert and then rejoined the main trail at the Humboldt River in what is now Nevada.

On, uh, a map, the route was shorter.

The critical fact that Hastings either did not know or chose not to emphasize was that no wagon train had ever traveled the cutoff.

Ethan Rarick's Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West (2008) provides the most readable narrative history for a general audience.

Frank Mullen Jr.'s The Donner Party Chronicles (1997) follows the journey day by day using the primary sources with unusual precision.

The Hastings Cutoff's role in the disaster has been examined extensively by historians.

The consensus is that the three weeks lost in the Wasatch Mountains were the decisive factor.