1935 Booklet A HAPPY ISSUE Donner Party ZAMORANO CLUB Roxburghe LIMITED EDITION

Description

1935
Booklet
A HAPPY ISSUE
Donner Party
ZAMORANO
CLUB
Roxburghe
LIMITED EDITION
DESCRIPTION: A HAPPY ISSUE: The Hitherto Unpublished Letter of a Child, Virginia Elizabeth B. Reed, Survivor of the Donner-Reed Party;
Wm. Hartley Davis (Editor); forward by Lucia Shepardson De Wolf; Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University, Privately Published, MCMXXXV [1935]; frontispiece; 8vo. [6-1/2 by 8-3/4 inches]; 15 pages; Paper Wraps; printed on Buckeye Laid Antique Paper for members of the
Roxburghe Club
of San Francisco and the
Zamorano Club
of Los Angeles;
Limited Edition,
Numbered 53 of 100.
CONDITION:
FINE [see scans].
SECURITY:
ARGUS BOOKS
[or other wording] in
PINK
may have been super-imposed over the images for security and are not on the actual item.
HISTORY:
THE DONNER PARTY
(sometimes called the Donner–Reed Party) was a group of American pioneers who migrated to California in a wagon train from the Midwest. Delayed by a series of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–47 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Some of the migrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, eating the bodies of those who had succumbed to starvation and sickness.
The Donner Party departed Missouri on the Oregon Trail in the spring of 1846, behind many other pioneer families who were attempting to make the same overland trip. The journey west usually took between four and six months, but the Donner Party was slowed after electing to follow a new route called the Hastings Cutoff, which bypassed established trails and instead crossed Utah's Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake Desert. The desolate and rugged terrain, and the difficulties they later encountered while traveling along the Humboldt River in present-day Nevada, resulted in the loss of many cattle and wagons, and divisions soon formed within the group.
By early November, the migrants had reached the Sierra Nevada but became trapped by an early, heavy snowfall near Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake) high in the mountains. Their food supplies ran dangerously low, and in mid-December some of the group set out on foot to obtain help. Rescuers from California attempted to reach the migrants, but the first relief party did not arrive until the middle of February 1847, almost four months after the wagon train became trapped. Of the 87 members of the party, 48 survived the ordeal. Historians have described the episode as one of the most spectacular tragedies in California history, and in the entire record of American westward migration.
SHIPPING:
All paper items [broadsides, labels, pamphlets, brochures, photos, etc.] that are 1/4 of an inch thick or less are shipped between two double-walled pieces of cardboard [equal to 4 sheets of cardboard and are virtually impossible to bend] by USPS Media mail and at actual cost [unless other arrangements have been made with seller]. [LU – B2 – S4]