Donner party

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pages: 608 words: 184,703

Moon Oregon Trail Road Trip: Historic Sites, Small Towns, and Scenic Landscapes Along the Legendary Westward Route by Katrina Emery, Moon Travel Guides

Airbnb, bike sharing, California gold rush, car-free, crowdsourcing, desegregation, Donner party, glass ceiling, indoor plumbing, Kickstarter, Lyft, Mason jar, mass immigration, pez dispenser, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rosa Parks, trade route, transcontinental railway, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, Works Progress Administration

., 785/363-7721, dawn-dusk daily, free). Well known to Native Americans and then fur trappers of the region, the spring was given its name by Edwin Bryant, a member of the notorious Donner Party; they stopped to rest here in 1846 while waiting to ford the Big Blue River. Party member George McKinstry carved the new name, Alcove Springs, into the rocks, and J. R. Reed carved his signature; these and other carvings can still be seen today. A Pioneer Story: The Donner Party The Donner Party, or Donner-Reed Party, is notorious today for resorting to cannibalism to survive the deadly cold of the Sierra Nevadas. The party struck out from Independence, Missouri, in May 1846, headed to California.

S Visit Gateway Arch National Park with its revamped museum, which provides a thoughtful look at westward expansion (click here). S See rescued sunken cargo from the pioneer era at the Arabia Steamboat Museum (click here). S See pioneer names carved into stone at Alcove Springs, a beautiful natural haven where the Donner Party once rested (click here). Oregon Fever! The obsession gripped the nation as economic failures rippled through farms and banks in the East in the late 1830s. Lewis and Clark started their explorations from St. Louis, Gateway to the West, but by 1830 the frontier had moved farther west, to towns like Independence, Missouri—the official start of the Oregon Trail.

“In procuring supplies for this journey, the emigrant should provide himself with, at least 200 pounds of flour, 150 pounds of bacon, ten pounds of coffee, twenty pounds of sugar, and ten pounds of salt.” Lansford Hastings, 1845, The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California. Hastings wrote one of the earliest guidebooks of the trail, which later become notorious for promoting a spurious shortcut to California, the Hastings Cutoff, which led the Donner Party to tragedy. Getting There From the Rice-Tremonti Home, continue just a few minutes south on Blue Ridge Boulevard, for 0.6 mile (1 km), then turn right onto Gregory Boulevard. The parking lot to the park—also known as William M. Klein Park—is on the left. 85th and Manchester Trail Ruts/Wieduwilt Swales Sometimes referred to as the Wieduwilt Swales, hidden in a residential neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri, at 85th and Manchester, on the corner of a lot, are some of the state’s best ruts, deep and easy to see, dramatically cutting into the ground.


Northern California Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

Airbnb, Apple II, Asilomar, back-to-the-land, Bay Area Rapid Transit, big-box store, bike sharing, Burning Man, buy and hold, California gold rush, California high-speed rail, call centre, car-free, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, company town, dark matter, Day of the Dead, Donald Trump, Donner party, East Village, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Frank Gehry, friendly fire, gentrification, gigafactory, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Google bus, Haight Ashbury, haute couture, haute cuisine, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Joan Didion, Kickstarter, Loma Prieta earthquake, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Mason jar, McMansion, means of production, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, Peoples Temple, Port of Oakland, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South of Market, San Francisco, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, the built environment, trade route, transcontinental railway, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl, white picket fence, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration, young professional

Donner Memorial State ParkSTATE PARK ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %530-582-7892; www.parks.ca.gov; Donner Pass Rd; per car $8; h10am-5pm; pc) At the eastern end of Donner Lake, this state-run park occupies one of the sites where the doomed Donner Party got trapped during the fateful winter of 1846. Though its history is gruesome, the park is gorgeous and has a sandy beach, picnic tables, hiking trails and wintertime cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. The entry fee includes admission to the visitor center, which has fascinating, if macabre, historical exhibits and a 25-minute film reenacting the Donner Party’s horrific plight. There are also displays about the Chinese workers who turned from gold mining to building California's railways.

Old JailHISTORIC BUILDING ( GOOGLE MAP ; www.truckeehistory.org; 10142 Jiboom St, cnr Spring St; suggested donation $2; h11am-4pm Sat & Sun late May & mid-Jun–mid-Sep) Continuously in use until the 1960s, this 1875 redbrick building is filled with relics from the wild days of yore. George ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly was reportedly once held here for shoplifting at a local variety store, and ‘Baby Face’ Nelson and ‘Ma’ Spinelli and her gang did time too. THE DOOMED DONNER PARTY In the 19th century, tens of thousands of people migrated west along the Overland Trail with dreams of a better life in California. Among them was the ill-fated Donner Party. When the families of George and Jacob Donner and their friend James Reed departed Springfield, IL, in April 1846 with six wagons and a herd of livestock, they intended to make the arduous journey as comfortable as possible.

Bancroft LibraryLIBRARY ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %510-642-3781; www.lib.berkeley.edu/libraries/bancroft-library; University Dr; harchives 10am-4pm or 5pm Mon-Fri; ZDowntown Berkeley)F The Bancroft houses, among other gems, the papers of Mark Twain, a copy of Shakespeare’s folios and a diary from the Donner Party. Its small public exhibits of historical Californiana include the surprisingly small gold nugget that sparked the 1849 gold rush. Rotating temporary exhibits spotlight history and art, with pieces from the library's own collections. To register to use the library, you must present a current government or academic-issued photo ID.


California by Sara Benson

airport security, Albert Einstein, Apple II, Asilomar, back-to-the-land, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, Blue Bottle Coffee, Burning Man, buy and hold, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, Columbine, company town, dark matter, Day of the Dead, desegregation, Donald Trump, Donner party, East Village, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, Frank Gehry, gentrification, global village, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, haute cuisine, Joan Didion, Khyber Pass, Loma Prieta earthquake, low cost airline, machine readable, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, McMansion, means of production, megaproject, Menlo Park, Neil Armstrong, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, planetary scale, retail therapy, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, SpaceShipOne, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, the new new thing, trade route, transcontinental railway, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl, Wall-E, white picket fence, Whole Earth Catalog, working poor, Works Progress Administration, young professional

The Old Jail ( 530-582-0893; cnr Jiboom & Spring Sts; suggested donation $2; 11am-4pm Sat & Sun late May-early Sep), in use until the 1960s, is filled with relics from the wild days of yore, and George ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly was reportedly once held here for shoplifting at a local store. * * * THE DONNER PARTY In the 19th century, tens of thousands of people migrated west along the Overland Trail with dreams of a better life in California. Among them was the ill-fated Donner Party. When the families of George and Jacob Donner and their friend James Reed departed Springfield, Illinois, in April 1846 with six wagons and a herd of livestock, they intended to make the arduous journey as comfortable as possible.

In the end, only 47 of the 89 members of the Donner Party survived. They settled in California, their lives forever changed by the harrowing winter at Donner Lake. * * * DONNER LAKE Warmer than Lake Tahoe, tree-lined Donner Lake is great for swimming, boating, fishing (license required), waterskiing and windsurfing. West End Beach (adult/child $3/2) is popular with families for its volleyball, basketball, snack stand and roped-off swimming area. On the lake’s eastern end, Donner Memorial State Park ( 530-582-7892; www.parks.ca.gov; vehicle fee $6) occupies one of three sites where the Donner Party got trapped (see boxed text, above).

But through marriage and other mergers, most of the land and wealth in California was held by just 46 ranchero families by 1846. Return to beginning of chapter THE GOLDEN BEAR While rancheros were occupied with leather, soap and juicy scandal, Americans began arriving in the trading post of Los Angeles via the Santa Fe Trail. The northern passes through the Sierras were trickier, as the Donner Party (Click here) tragically discovered in 1846 – stranded in a desolate mountain pass, they resorted to cannibalism. The US saw potential in California, but when US President Andrew Jackson offered the financially strapped Mexican government $500,000 for the territory, the offer was tersely rejected – an insult aggravated by rumors that Mexico was entertaining a British buyout offer.


Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling

Berlin Wall, Burning Man, Donner party, East Village, financial engineering, illegal immigration, index card, medical residency, pre–internet, rent control, Saturday Night Live, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

It’s always been incredibly challenging for me to put pen to page, because writing, at its heart, is a solitary pursuit, designed to make people depressoids, drug addicts, misanthropes, and antisocial weirdos (see every successful writer ever except Judy Blume). I also have a nice office at work, but I use it primarily as a messy closet. The Internet also makes it extraordinarily difficult for me to focus. One small break to look up exactly how almond milk is made, and four hours later I’m reading about the Donner Party and texting all my friends: DID YOU GUYS KNOW ABOUT THE DONNER PARTY AND HOW MESSED UP THAT WAS? TEXT ME BACK SO WE CAN TALK ABOUT IT! My high school newspaper interviewed me a few years ago and wanted a photo of me writing, so I had my coworker Dan Goor take this of me looking polished and writerly at my work desk. It is so fraudulent it makes me laugh.


Amazing Train Journeys by Lonely Planet

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, British Empire, car-free, colonial rule, country house hotel, Donner party, high-speed rail, megacity, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, trade route, urban sprawl

A whistle and a lurch and the double-decker train chugs onto the great American prairie. East of the Mississippi in Illinois, the farmland still has the verdant lushness of the eastern United States – but we’re bound © JAN ABADSCHIEFF | UWAVISION | 500PX; © JOE RAEDLE | GETTY IMAGES; © JOHN ACURSO Donner Party As you cross the Sierra Nevada in lounge-car comfort, consider the Donner Party, America’s most ill-fated mid-19th-century pioneer expedition. Plagued by a disastrous detour off the Oregon Trail and an early November blizzard, the San Francisco–bound group was forced to overwinter beside frozen Truckee Lake, and eventually resorted to cannibalism.


pages: 255 words: 79,514

How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Dunbar’s Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks by Robin Dunbar, Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar

agricultural Revolution, Albert Michelson, Donner party, Fellow of the Royal Society, glass ceiling, Gregor Mendel, Isaac Newton, mass immigration, Nash equilibrium, nuclear winter, out of africa, pattern recognition, Richard Feynman, social intelligence, Steven Pinker, theory of mind, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Malthus, trolley problem, University of East Anglia, upwardly mobile

We refer to in-laws as relatives for the very good reason that we and they share a common genetic interest in the offspring who will, in due course, become the parents of the next generation. The importance of kinship is well illustrated by one of the iconic events in American folklore. In May 1846 at the height of the ‘taming of the Wild West’ and gold fever, the intrepid colonists of the Donner Party set out from Little Sandy River in Wyoming on the last stage of a long trek to California and a new life, a journey that had begun in Springfield, Illinois, more than a month before. Several untoward events – disorganisation at the start, some ill-advised routing, and attacks by Indians along the way –conspired to delay the party, which at its height numbered eighty-seven men, women and children.

., 217 climate warming, 150–2, 156–9 Clinton, Hillary, 167–8 colour vision, 9, 17–20, 183–4 community: kinship, 35, 38–9; membership, 39, 82; role, 35; small-scale, 35, 38–9, 291–2 conscious thinking, 23, 63, 72, 170, 181 conversations, 74–5, 79–80, 286 Copernicus, Nicolas, 119 Corti, organ of, 184 creationism, 113 crocodiles, 98, 121–2 cuckoldry, 255–8 culture, human, 4, 137–8, 175, 191–4, 196–8 Cunningham, Michael, 235 Cuvier, Baron, 7, 182 Dalí, Salvador, 163 Daly, Martin, 95, 259 dance, 72, 284, 287 Darwin, Charles: Descent of Man, 70, 72, 85; evolutionary theory, 6–10, 100, 111, 115–16, 126, 164, 227, 279, 292; influences on, 157, 183; letter-writing, 21; marriage plans, 243; Origin of Species, 5, 7–8, 113, 157 Darwin, Erasmus, 7 Davies, Nick, 256 Dawkins, Richard, 5 DDT, 99, 116 Dearie, Ian, 204, 205 death, age at, 204–5 Declaration of Arbroath, 50–1 Dene-Caucasian languages, 53 Dennett, Daniel, 177 Descartes, René, 191, 195, 209, 210 Dhondt, André, 260 dialects, 44–5 Diamond, Jared, 91 diamond market, 64 dichotomies, 182–5 dinosaurs, 120–2, 143–4 diseases, new, 100–3 divorce, 108, 110, 254, 260–1 DNA, 47, 120–1, 124–5, 140, 255 dogs, 180, 195, 277 Dohnányi, Christoph von, 218 Domesday Book, 27 dominance, male, 29 Dominica, island of, 41 Donner Party, 39–40 Douglas, Stephen, 168–9 Duck, Steve, 238 Dunbar’s Number, 4, 24, 28, 285 dunnocks (hedge sparrows), 256–7 Durkheim, Émile, 284, 291 Edinburgh Enlightenment, 213 education: effect on political views, 170–1; exercise and, [Page 295] 208–12; science, 214; Scots, 212–14; study of Latin, 223–6 Einstein, Albert, 172, 212, 216, 218 elections, 164–9 emotional response mechanism, 16 emotional responses, 169–71 endorphins: levels, 210–11; release triggered by grooming, 62, 69, 286; release triggered by laughter, 68, 69; release triggered by music, 72, 76, 78; release triggered by religious rituals, 284–5, 287, 291–2; release triggered by spices, 106; role, 62, 209 Enquist, Magnus, 259 Eskimo peoples, 91–2, 246 evolution, 5–10, 113–15, 279, 292 evolutionary psychologists, 42–3, 71, 161, 185, 281 extinctions, 143–6; frankincense trees, 146–9; languages, 152–3; mammoths, 149–52 eyes, 17, 114–15 Facebook, 21 faces, 164–8 factory size, 26 Falk, Dean, 76 Farisai, Kamal al-Din al-, 119 Farrant, Patti, 106 Farthing, William, 248–9 fertility, 207–8, 234 Feynman, Richard, 217 fighting, 16–17 Flores, island of, 128 food production, 157–8 forests, 144–5 fossil record, 119–20, 128–35 frankincense, 9, 146–9 Freud, Sigmund, 244, 258, 283 friends, number of, 21–2, 32 ‘Frisch Effect’, 234 frontal lobe of brain, 181, 269–70, 273, 290 Fulani, 88 Furness, Bob, 260–1 Gaelic, 9, 41–2, 152–3, 154–5 Gardner, Lucinda, 163 genes: haplotypes, 48–50; mutation, 49–50, 85, 115; parental, 14–15; see also chromosomes genetic drift, 49 Genghis Khan, 47–50 genomic imprinting, 15–16 geology, 182–3 Gilday, Jamie, 45 Glass, Philip, 218 godparents, 42, 108 GoreTex, 26 gorillas: classification, 274; eaten, 131; extinction threat, 145; language, 196, 275; relationship with humans, 122, 275; zoo exhibit, 267 gossip, 79–81, 286 great apes, see chimpanzees, gorillas, orang utans Great Chain of Being, 7 Greenland, 125 grooming: baboon tactical deception, 30; language as, 73–4; nuzzling, 243; relationship involved, 61–2, 73–4, 80, 286–7; release of endorphins, 62, 69, 286–7 group size, 23–8, 33–4, 81, 290–1 Haidt, Jonathan, 268 Hamilton’s Rule, 43–4 haplotypes, 48–50 Harcourt, Sandy, 253 Hauser, Marc, 270 health, link with IQ, 204–6 [Page 296] hearing, 184 height, 162–4, 166–9, 207 Helmholtz, Herman von, 183 Hering, Ewald, 183 heroism, 249–50 Hill, Elizabeth, 163 Hill, Russell, 26 Hitler, Adolf, 170 ‘Hobbit, The’, 128–32 home-wreckers, 260–1 Homo: erectus, 69, 93, 127, 128, 129–30, 290; floresiensis, 129; genus, 134; sapiens, 81 Hume, David, 213, 268, 270 hunter-gatherers, 158–9 Hurst, Jane, 246 Hutterites, 27–8 Huxley, Thomas, 117 ibn al-Haytham, Hasan, 118–19 ibn Musa, Abu Jafar Muhammed, 118 Ice Age, 149–50, 156 Iceland, 58–9 immune system, 106, 244–6, 285 income, IQ and, 207 Indo-European: language, 51–3; migrations, 51–4, 139 Intelligent Design (ID), 113–16 intentional stance, 177–8 intentionality: ape capacity, 181, 200, 272, 273; brain evaluation of, 270; definition, 180; fifth-order, 180, 181, 199–201, 272, 289, 290; first-order, 180, 181, 272; fourth-order, 200, 289, 290; frontal lobe involvement, 181, 269–70, 273, 290; human capacity, 181, 199–200, 272, 273, 289–90; monkey capacity, 181, 272, 273; religious belief and, 271–2, 278, 289–90; secondorder, 180, 181, 200, 271, 272, 273, 289; sixth-order, 201; third-order, 200, 289, 290 Inuit, 38, 125 IQ, 185, 203–6, 207, 210, 212 Islam: law, 260; science, 118–19; views on evolution, 117 IVF pregnancies, 106 Jablonski, Nina, 89–90 jealousy, 259–60 Jobling, Mark, 57 Johnson, Dominic, 264 Johnson, Douglas, 169 jury system, 171–4 Kanpur (Cawnpore), 35–6 Kant, Immanuel, 268 Kanzi, 275–6 Kaskatis, Kostas, 71 Keefe, Richard, 230 Kelly, Sue, 248, 249 Kennewick Man, 123–4 Kenrick, Douglas, 229–30 Kenya: Amboseli National Park, 16, 195; fossils, 132; religion, 116–17 Kerry, John, 167 Keverne, Barry, 15 killdeer, 260 kinship: circles of acquaintanceship, 34; communities, 35, 38–9; evolutionary significance, 43–4; social framework, 35 kissing, 243–6 klipspringer, 259 Kluckhohn, Clyde, 192 Kroeber, Alfred, 192 Krummhörn, parish registers, 42, 227, 237 Kummer, Hans, 30 [Page 297] lactase gene, 86, 88 Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, 7 language(s): animals, 195–6; apes, 275–6; Basque, 51–4; dialect and, 44–5; evolution, 79–81, 153–5; extinction, 152–3, 155; geographical distribution, 102; Indo-European, 51–3; motherese, 76–8 Lascaux cave art, 137 Latin, 153, 154, 219, 223, 225 laughter, 9, 66–9 Lavoisier, Antoine, 186 law, 58, 171–4, 260, 268, 271 Lawrence, T.


pages: 448 words: 84,462

Testing Extreme Programming by Lisa Crispin, Tip House

business logic, c2.com, continuous integration, data acquisition, database schema, Donner party, Drosophila, fail fast, hypertext link, index card, job automation, systems thinking, web application

Create or mock up a spreadsheet for him that corresponds to the executable test in question 1. Chapter 18. Test Design and Refactoring On the last day of our XP road trip, we'll be leaving the Great Plains behind and heading up into the mountain passes. Hopefully, all the work we've done up to this point will keep us from getting buried in an avalanche or stranded like the infamous Donner party. (Customers may complain when the system isn't right, but they get awfully annoyed when you eat them ;-) In this chapter, we're going to talk about some simple test design. "Whoa!" you may say. "We're already writing executable tests—isn't the time for design long past?" No, actually, the time for overdesign is past.

But if we did that, some of you wouldn't take it seriously, and you'd end up with a bunch of manual tests. Don't go there. On an Extreme Programming project, a manual test may be worse than no test at all. On our XP road trip, manual testing might lead us to a misadventure similar to that of the aforementioned Donner Party. In this chapter, we're going to explain our stance on test automation. In the following few chapters, we're going to talk about various avenues we could take to automate our tests. Your team can consider the various options we present and adopt the ones that will help you on your own journey.


pages: 801 words: 242,104

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond

biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, California energy crisis, classic study, clean water, colonial rule, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, Donner party, Easter island, European colonialism, Exxon Valdez, Garrett Hardin, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, job satisfaction, low interest rates, means of production, Medieval Warm Period, megaproject, new economy, North Sea oil, Piper Alpha, polynesian navigation, profit motive, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, Stewart Brand, Thomas Malthus, Timothy McVeigh, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transcontinental railway, unemployed young men

When people are trapped together with no possibility of emigration, enemies can no longer resolve tensions merely by moving apart. Those tensions may have exploded in mass murder, which later nearly did destroy the colony of Bounty mutineers on Pitcairn itself. Murder could also have been driven by food shortage and cannibalism, as happened to the Mangarevans, Easter Islanders, and—closer to home for Americans—the Donner Party in California. Perhaps people grown desperate turned to mass suicide, which was recently the choice of 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult near San Diego, California. Desperation might instead have led to insanity, the fate of some members of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, whose ship was trapped by ice for over a year in 1898-1899.

That explosion of environmental and population problems in the form of civil unrest and warfare is a frequent theme in this book, both for past societies (the Easter Islanders, Mangarevans, Maya, and Tikopians) and for modern societies (Rwanda, Haiti, and others). The signs of warfare-related cannibalism among the Anasazi are an interesting story in themselves. While everyone acknowledges that cannibalism may be practiced in emergencies by desperate people, such as the Donner Party trapped by snow at Donner Pass en route to California in the winter of 1846-47, or by starving Russians during the siege of Leningrad during World War II, the existence of non-emergency cannibalism is controversial. In fact, it was reported in hundreds of non-European societies at the times when they were first contacted by Europeans within recent centuries.

Tikopia and tragedy of the commons Bougainville copper mine BP (British Petroleum) Buffalo Creek, West Virginia Burundi: genocide in independence of business, see big business Cahokia, collapse of Canada: Franklin Expedition in Inuit in logging in Native Americans in settlements of Canela y Lázaro, Miguel cannibalism: of Anasazi anthropologists’ objections to of Donner Party on Easter Island in Leningrad siege on Mangareva on Pitcairn and warfare carbon isotope analyses carbon sink Carson, Rachel Catherwood, Frederick CFCs, harmful effects of Chardón, Carlos chemical industry chestnut blight Chevron Corporation Chevron Niugini Chevron Texaco Chicago Zoological Society Chile: and Easter Island fishing in mining in wine palm of wood imports from China agriculture climate change in conquering Nature in Cultural Revolution in cultural values of deforestation in development projects in economic growth of emigration from environmental problems of First World goals of food in foreign investment in geography of global connectedness of Grain-to-Green program grassland in Great Leap Forward in health problems in land ownership in map natural disasters in Olympic Games in per-capita environmental impact of political unity in population control in population of shifting environmental thinking in species diversity in top-down decision-making in trade with warlords in water diversion project in western, development of chlorofluorocarbons Christianity, exclusivity of chronic wasting disease (CWD) Churchill, Winston Clark Fork River Superfund site Clean Water Act Clearcut Controversy (Montana) climate change and forest fires in global warming in tree ring studies and water levels Club of Rome coal mining collapse: comparative method of study of complex societies in five-point framework of past vs. modern societies and power cycling use of term Colorado, mining in Colorado River, diversion of Columbus, Christopher comparative studies consumer influence Cook, Capt.


pages: 450 words: 114,766

Milk! by Mark Kurlansky

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, British Empire, clean water, Donner party, double helix, feminist movement, haute cuisine, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, spice trade, W. E. B. Du Bois

Many had died from starvation, and many of the survivors had stayed alive by eating the dead. This was a well-known and sensational story in 1847, and Gail Borden kept thinking that everyone in the Donner party could have survived if they had had well-preserved provisions. The invention that Borden then came up with was dehydrated meat biscuits. Meat was dried in an oven, mixed with flour or vegetable meal, and pressed into thick crackers. He imagined huge sales orders coming in from armies all over the world and from explorers and migrants making long treks, like the Donner party. The biscuits won him a gold medal at a London exhibition, but no one wanted to buy them because it was generally agreed that they tasted awful.


pages: 184 words: 62,220

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Charles Lindbergh, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Donner party, Dr. Strangelove, East Village, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, Joan Didion, Khartoum Gordon, Mahatma Gandhi, Marshall McLuhan, Maui Hawaii, profit motive, sealed-bid auction

The Jayhawkers, who quarreled and separated not far from where I am tonight. Some of them died in the Funerals and some of them died down near Badwater and most of the rest of them died in the Panamints. A woman who got through gave the Valley its name. Some might say that the Jayhawkers were killed by the desert summer, and the Donner Party by the mountain winter, by circumstances beyond control; we were taught instead that they had somewhere abdicated their responsibilities, somehow breached their primary loyalties, or they would not have found themselves helpless in the mountain winter or the desert summer, would not have given way to acrimony, would not have deserted one another, would not have failed.


pages: 213 words: 70,742

Notes From an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back by Mark O'Connell

Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, California gold rush, carbon footprint, Carrington event, clean water, Colonization of Mars, conceptual framework, cryptocurrency, disruptive innovation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Donner party, Easter island, Elon Musk, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, Jeff Bezos, life extension, lock screen, low earth orbit, Marc Andreessen, Mars Society, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, New Urbanism, off grid, Peter Thiel, post-work, Sam Altman, Silicon Valley, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, the built environment, yield curve

Because if I thought I was going to be able to get past the armed guards Vivos would have stationed at all the property’s perimeters, good luck to me. I was going to be out there, and you know who was going to be out there with me? A whole lot of other people, and not a lot of food. And it was a known fact, historically, that after twenty-one days without food, people will resort to cannibalism. Here he appealed to the precedent of the Donner Party. In his telling, it seemed to me to be both origin myth and prophecy, a story about a country founded in savagery and destined to devour itself. “There’s going to be gangs roaming,” he said. “Cannibals in great numbers. Raping. Pillaging. The have-nots coming after the haves for everything they’ve got.


pages: 1,540 words: 400,759

Fodor's California 2014 by Fodor's

1960s counterculture, active transport: walking or cycling, affirmative action, Asilomar, Bay Area Rapid Transit, big-box store, Blue Bottle Coffee, California gold rush, car-free, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Donner party, Downton Abbey, East Village, El Camino Real, Frank Gehry, gentrification, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Kickstarter, Maui Hawaii, messenger bag, Mikhail Gorbachev, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, trade route, transcontinental railway, urban renewal, urban sprawl, white picket fence, Works Progress Administration, young professional

| 96161 | 530/587–8808 | www.truckee.com. Exploring Donner Memorial State Park and Emigrant Trail Museum. The park and museum commemorate the Donner Party, westward-bound pioneers—about 90; historians debate the exact number—who became trapped in the Sierra in the winter of 1846–47 in snow 22 feet deep. Barely more than half the pioneers survived, some by resorting to cannibalism. The Emigrant Trail Museum details the Donner Party’s plight, and other displays explain railroad development through the Sierra. In the park, you can picnic, hike, camp, and go boating, fishing, and waterskiing in summer; winter brings cross-country skiing and snowshoeing on groomed trails.

In the park, you can picnic, hike, camp, and go boating, fishing, and waterskiing in summer; winter brings cross-country skiing and snowshoeing on groomed trails. Slated for a 2014 debut, a new High Sierra Crossing Museum will contain exhibits about the Donner Party, regional Native Americans, and railroad and transportation development through Donner Pass. | 12593 Donner Pass Rd., off I–80, 2 miles west of Truckee | 96161 | 530/582–7892 museum, 800/444–7275 camping reservations | www.parks.ca.gov | $8 parking, day use | Museum late May–early Sept., daily 10–5; closed Tues. early Sept.–late May. Off the Beaten Path: Tahoe National Forest. Draped along the Sierra Nevada Crest north of Lake Tahoe, the national forest offers abundant outdoor recreation: hiking, picnicking, and camping in summer, and in winter, snowshoeing, skiing, and sledding over some of the deepest snowpack in the West. | Truckee ranger station,10811 Stockrest Springs Rd. | 96161 | 530/587–3558 Truckee ranger station, 530/265–4531 forest headquarters | www.fs.usda.gov/tahoe.

Look for the staircase: the restaurant is on the second floor. | Average main: $25 | 10118 Donner Pass Rd., at Spring St. | 96161 | 530/587–0557 | www.dragonflycuisine.com. FiftyFifty Brewing Company. AMERICAN | In this Truckee brewpub, warm red tones and comfy booths, plus a pint of the Donner Party Porter, will take the nip out of a cold day on the slopes. The lunch-into-dinner menu includes salads, burgers, and the house specialty, a pulled-pork sandwich, plus barbecued ribs and pan-seared salmon. Order one of the inventive pizzas anytime. There’s a full bar along with the brews, and lots of après-ski action. | Average main: $19 | 11197 Brockway Rd. | 96161 | 530/587–2337 | www.fiftyfiftybrewing.com.


pages: 536 words: 79,887

A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Lucy Bird, Daniel J. Boorstin

Columbine, Donner party, Internet Archive, Open Library

.: 70, 136-40, 183, 184, 186, 225 Evans' in, 137-38, 186 financial panic in, 119-20, 191, 197-98 Indians in, 139, 140, 183 "Denver stage road": 170, 172-74 Denver wagon road: see Denver stage road Devil's Gate: 108, 237 Dewy, Mr. and Mrs.: 112, 118, 124, 186, 204 Digger Indians: see Indians Divide: see Continental Divide Divide of the Arkansas: see Arkansas Divide Donner Lake, Calif.: 19-21 Donner party: 20-21 E Edwards, "Griff": 110, 111, 118, 186, 200, 201, 213, 233, 238 Mrs. Edwards, 84, 134, 186 English: women's reputation in America, 17 criticism of, 46, 52, 143, 163 "High Toners," 176-77 Estes Park: 5, 39, 44, 55, 58, 72, 73, 81, 82, 86, 94, 101, 104-9, 116-17, 159, 186, 198, 208, 212-13, 236, 237, 241, 246 accommodations in, 73, 82, 109-12, 226 life in, 102, 113-14, 118, 124, 201-3, 216-18 Page 253 wildlife, 104, 114, 123 vegetation, 107-8 access to, 108-9 inhabitants of, 109, 110, 112-13, 119, 201 skunks, 115-16 Mirror Lake, 116, 118 snowbound in, 132-34 wolves, 210, 212 winter fishing, 225 see also Evans, Griffith Evans, Griffith: 81-82, 107, 109-11, 113, 118-22, 126, 134, 201, 213, 219, 234, 238, 239, 241 and "Rocky Mountain Jim" Nugent, 113, 216, 239, 241, 248 Denver home of, 137-38; 186 family, 111, 137-38 ranch in Estes Park, 73, 81, 109-10 see also Estes Park F Fairplay: 171, 179 Fall River: 210-11 Farming, in Colorado: 147, 149 see also irrigation Financial panic: see Denver, financial panic in Fishing, winter: 225 Fodder, Mr.: 248-49 Foot Hills: 37-38, 105, 150, 183, 188 Fort Collins: 32, 34-36, 71 Fort Laramie, Wyo.: 25 Fountain River: 156-58 Freightage, business: 181 wagons, 12, 26, 174, 178, 180-81 Frost-fall: 248 G Garden of the Gods: 155-56 "Gem of the Sierras": see Donner Lake Georgetown: 188-92, 195 mining, 192-94 Glen Eyrie: 152, 155, 156 Golden City: 187, 188 Gray's Peak: 55, 97, 139 "Great Divide, The": see Continental Divide Great Gorge of the Manitou: see Manitou "Great Lone Land, The": 53-54 Great Platte Canyon, ranch at: 141-42 Great Salt Lake, Utah: 24 Greeley Temperance Colony: 29, 30-33, 249 accommodations in, 31-32 temperance in, 31, 182 Greeley Tribune: 74 Green Lake: 188, 191, 192, 194 "Grundy, Mrs


pages: 237 words: 82,266

You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up by Annabelle Gurwitch

Alvin Toffler, Atul Gawande, Bernie Madoff, big-box store, Donald Trump, Donner party, Exxon Valdez, Future Shock, Joan Didion, Mahatma Gandhi, open immigration, Ronald Reagan, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Yogi Berra

I have tried to read some of them, but only get agitated and throw them across the room. I like to think of the authors of those books as the Daniel Boones and Davy Crocketts of the new frontier of marriage. And if they are Boones and Crocketts, then you should think of Annabelle and me and our book as the Donner Party. I hope our book will serve as a happy guide for the many people traveling up the same twisting, winding, rocky slopes of marriage as they do their best to avoid the paths we have taken so they won’t get stuck with us on some freezing wintry mountain pass. It’s in this spirit that we want to make you laugh and perhaps even learn from our profound lack of wisdom and warped perspectives.


pages: 753 words: 233,306

Collapse by Jared Diamond

biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, California energy crisis, classic study, clean water, colonial rule, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, Donner party, Easter island, European colonialism, Exxon Valdez, Garrett Hardin, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, job satisfaction, low interest rates, means of production, Medieval Warm Period, megaproject, new economy, North Sea oil, Piper Alpha, polynesian navigation, prisoner's dilemma, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, Stewart Brand, Thomas Malthus, Timothy McVeigh, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transcontinental railway, unemployed young men

When people are trapped together with no possibility of emigration, enemies can no longer resolve tensions merely by moving apart. Those tensions may have exploded in mass murder, which later nearly did destroy the colony of Bounty mutineers on Pitcairn itself. Murder could also have been driven by food shortage and cannibalism, as happened to the Mangarevans, Easter Islanders, and—closer to home for Americans—the Donner Party in California. Perhaps people grown desperate turned to mass suicide, which was recently the choice of 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult near San Diego, California. Desperation might instead have led to insanity, the fate of some members of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, whose ship was trapped by ice for over a year in 1898-1899.

That explosion of environmental and population problems in the form of civil unrest and warfare is a frequent theme in this book, both for past societies (the Easter Islanders, Mangarevans, Maya, and Tikopians) and for modern societies (Rwanda, Haiti, and others). The signs of warfare-related cannibalism among the Anasazi are an interesting story in themselves. While everyone acknowledges that cannibalism may be practiced in emergencies by desperate people, such as the Donner Party trapped by snow at Donner Pass en route to California in the winter of 1846-47, or by starving Russians during the siege of Leningrad during World War II, the existence of non-emergency cannibalism is controversial. In fact, it was reported in hundreds of non-European societies at the times when they were first contacted by Europeans within recent centuries.


pages: 339 words: 105,856

Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories by Hugh Howey

agricultural Revolution, CRISPR, Donner party, hive mind, Kevin Kelly, RFID, side project

“Will you still think that a year from now, when the last ration is consumed and we’re left watching one another waste away? Either it happens now, or it happens then. Which way is cleaner?” “We sound just like them,” Tracy whispered, mostly to herself. She eyed those monitors again, saw her reflection in one of them. “The Donner Party,” Sherman said. When one of the Russians turned to stare at him, Sherman started to explain. “Settlers heading west two centuries ago. They got trapped in the mountains and had to resort to—” “I’m familiar with the story. It’s not an option.” “I didn’t mean it was an option.” Sherman turned to Natasha.


Coastal California by Lonely Planet

1960s counterculture, airport security, Albert Einstein, Asilomar, back-to-the-land, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, bike sharing, Blue Bottle Coffee, buy and hold, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, company town, Day of the Dead, Donner party, East Village, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, electricity market, Frank Gehry, gentrification, global village, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, Joan Didion, Khyber Pass, Kickstarter, Loma Prieta earthquake, low cost airline, machine readable, Mason jar, McMansion, military-industrial complex, Neil Armstrong, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, stealth mode startup, Steve Wozniak, trade route, transcontinental railway, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl, white picket fence, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration, young professional, Zipcar

Museum of Paleontology MUSEUM ( 510-642-1821; www.ucmp.berkeley.edu; 8am-10pm Mon-Thu, to 5pm Fri, 10am-5pm Sat, 1-10pm Sun) Housed in the ornate Valley Life Sciences Building (and primarily a research facility that’s closed to the public), you can see a number of fossil exhibits in the atrium, including a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. Bancroft Library LIBRARY ( 510-642-3781; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu; 10am-5pm Mon-Fri) The Bancroft houses, among other gems, the papers of Mark Twain, a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio and the records of the Donner Party. Its small public exhibits of historical Californiana include the surprisingly small gold nugget that sparked the 1849 Gold Rush. You must register to use the library and, to do so, you need to be 18 years of age (or to have graduated from high school) and present two forms of identification (one with a photo).

Across 2nd St is the 1858 Plaza Hotel, which started life as a single-story adobe building, and now houses a little historical museum. Next door, the Castro-Breen Adobe once belonged to Mexican general José Castro, who led a successful revolt against an unpopular governor. In 1848 it was bought by the Breen family, survivors of the Donner Party disaster. Sleeping Fremont Peak State Park CAMPGROUND $ ( 831-623-4255; www.parks.ca.gov; San Juan Canyon Rd, off Hwy 156; per car $6, tent & RV sites $25; park 8am-30min after sunset, campground 24hr) Eleven miles south of town, this park has a pretty, but primitive, 20-site campground shaded by oak trees on a hilltop with distant views of Monterey Bay.


Western USA by Lonely Planet

airport security, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Apple II, Asilomar, back-to-the-land, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Biosphere 2, Burning Man, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cotton gin, Donner party, East Village, edge city, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Frank Gehry, global village, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, haute couture, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, intermodal, Joan Didion, Kickstarter, Loma Prieta earthquake, machine readable, Mahatma Gandhi, Mars Rover, Maui Hawaii, off grid, off-the-grid, retail therapy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South of Market, San Francisco, starchitect, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, supervolcano, trade route, transcontinental railway, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, Virgin Galactic, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, young professional, Zipcar

Ski bunnies have several area resorts to pick from, including glam Northstar-at-Tahoe ( 800-466-6784; www.northstarattahoe.com; off Hwy 267); kid-friendly Sugar Bowl ( 530-426-9000; www.sugarbowl.com; off Hwy 40), cofounded by Walt Disney; and Royal Gorge ( 530-426-3871; www.royalgorge.com; off I-80), paradise for cross-country skiers. West of Hwy 89, Donner Summit is where the infamous Donner Party became trapped during the fierce winter of 1846–47. Led astray by their guidebook, less than half survived – by cannibalizing their dead friends. The grisly tale is chronicled at the museum inside Donner Memorial State Park (www.parks.ca.gov; Donner Pass Rd; per car/campsites $8/35; museum 9am-4pm year-round, campground mid-May–mid-Sep), where Donner Lake is popular with swimmers and windsurfers.

Ecoconscious Cedar House Sport Hotel ( 530-582-5655; www.cedarhousesporthotel.com; 10918 Brockway Rd; r incl breakfast $170-270; ) is green building-certified, and has an outdoor hot tub and stylishly modern boutique rooms (pet fee $50). For live jazz and wine, Moody ’ s Bistro & Lounge ( 530-587-8688; www.moodysbistro.com; 10007 Bridge St; dinner mains $18-40; 11:30am-9:30pm Sun-Thu, to 10pm Fri & Sat) sources locally ranched meats and seasonal produce. Down pints of ‘Donner Party Porter’ at Fifty Fifty Brewing Co (www.fiftyfiftybrewing.com; 11197 Brockway Rd) across the tracks. Getting There & Around South Tahoe Express ( 866-898-2463; www.southtahoeexpress.com) runs frequent shuttles from Nevada’s Reno-Tahoe International Airport to Stateline (one way adult/child $27/15).


Coastal California Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

1960s counterculture, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Apollo 11, Apple II, Asilomar, back-to-the-land, Bay Area Rapid Transit, bike sharing, Burning Man, buy and hold, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, company town, Day of the Dead, Donner party, East Village, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, flex fuel, Frank Gehry, gentrification, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, haute couture, haute cuisine, income inequality, intermodal, Joan Didion, Kickstarter, Loma Prieta earthquake, low cost airline, Lyft, machine readable, Mason jar, military-industrial complex, New Journalism, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, Peoples Temple, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South of Market, San Francisco, starchitect, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, trade route, transcontinental railway, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, Wall-E, white picket fence, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration, young professional, Zipcar

Bancroft LibraryLIBRARY ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %510-642-3781; www.lib.berkeley.edu/libraries/bancroft-library; University Dr; harchives 10am-4pm or 5pm Mon-Fri; ZDowntown Berkeley)F The Bancroft houses, among other gems, the papers of Mark Twain, a copy of Shakespeare’s folios and a diary from the Donner Party. Its small public exhibits of historical Californiana include the surprisingly small gold nugget that sparked the 1849 gold rush. Rotating temporary exhibits spotlight history and art, with pieces from the library's own collections. To register to use the library, you must present a current government or academic-issued photo ID.

Cavernous stables hint at San Juan Bautista in its 1860s heyday as a stagecoach stop. The 1858 Plaza Hotel, which started life as a single-story adobe building, now houses a little historical museum. Next door to the hotel, the Castro-Breen Adobe once belonged to Mexican general and governor José Castro. In 1848 it was bought by the Breen family, survivors of the Donner Party disaster. 4Sleeping & Eating San Juan Bautista features a few B&Bs but is conveniently visited as a day trip from Santa Cruz or Monterey. Fremont Peak State Park CampgroundCAMPGROUND$ ( GOOGLE MAP ; %reservations 800-444-7275; www.reserveamerica.com; San Juan Canyon Rd; tent & RV sites $25) A pretty but primitive 25-site campground with vault toilets (no water) is shaded by oak trees on a hilltop with distant views of Monterey Bay.


pages: 769 words: 397,677

Frommer's California 2007 by Harry Basch, Mark Hiss, Erika Lenkert, Matthew Richard Poole

airport security, Asilomar, Bay Area Rapid Transit, car-free, Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean water, Columbine, Donald Trump, Donner party, East Village, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Frank Gehry, gentleman farmer, gentrification, Golden Gate Park, Guggenheim Bilbao, Haight Ashbury, high-speed rail, indoor plumbing, Iridium satellite, Joan Didion, Maui Hawaii, retail therapy, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, sustainable-tourism, transcontinental railway, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, white picket fence, Works Progress Administration

Arcata has it all: its own redwood forest and bird marsh, a charming town square, great family-owned restaurants, even its own minor-league baseball team, which draws the whole town together on many an afternoon. See “Eureka & Environs” in chapter 7. • Nevada City: The entire town is a national historic landmark and the best place to understand Gold Rush fever. Settled in 1849, it offers fine dining and shopping and a stock of the multigabled Victorian frame houses of the Old West. Relics of the Donner Party are on display at the 1861 Firehouse No. 1. See “The Gold Country” in chapter 10. • Pacific Grove: Escape beach crowds just 2 miles west of Monterey, in Pacific Grove, known for its tranquil waterfront and clean air. It draws thousands of monarch butterflies between October and March. See “Pacific Grove” in chapter 11. • Ojai: When filmmakers needed a Shangri-La for the movie Lost Horizon, they drove to Ojai Valley, with its unspoiled eucalyptus groves and small ranches in soft, green hills.

Pick up a walking-tour map at the Chamber of Commerce, 132 Main St., and stroll the streets lined with impressive Victorian buildings, including the Firehouse Number 1 Museum, 214 Main St. (& 530/265-5468), with bell tower, gingerbread decoration, a small museum that displays mementos from the Donner Party, a Maidu Indian basket collection, and an altar from a temple originally located in the Chinese section of Grass Valley. Admission is free. It’s open in summer daily from 11am to 4pm; from November 1 to May 1 hours are Thursday through Sunday from 11:30am to 4pm. The National Hotel (built 1854–56) is here (the Gold Rush–era bar serves a spicy bloody mary), as is the Nevada Theatre (1865), one of the oldest theaters in the nation still operating as such.

There’s much to see on the restored city plaza as well. The San Juan Bautista State Historic Park comprises the old Plaza Hotel with its frontier barroom and furnished rooms; the Plaza Hall, its adjoining stables and blacksmith shop; and the Castro House, where the Breen family lived after traveling here with the ill-fated Donner Party in 1846. Allow 11⁄2 to 2 hours to see the entire plaza. Admission to the park buildings is $2 for adults, $1 for children ages 6 to 12 (separate from the mission admission). Hours are daily from 10am to 4:30pm. For more information, call & 831/623-4526. 2 Monterey ™ 45 miles S of Santa Cruz; 116 miles S of San Francisco; 335 miles N of Los Angeles Monterey is now famous as the site of the world’s longest running jazz festival (p. 30, in the Calendar of Events), which draws nearly 50,000 visitors annually for performances by the likes of Tony Bennett, Sonny Rollins, and Branford Marsalis.


pages: 423 words: 129,831

The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways by Earl Swift

1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, big-box store, blue-collar work, congestion pricing, Donner party, edge city, Ford Model T, General Motors Futurama, Kickstarter, Lewis Mumford, new economy, New Urbanism, off-the-grid, plutocrats, pneumatic tube, Ralph Nader, side project, smart transportation, Southern State Parkway, streetcar suburb, traveling salesman, Unsafe at Any Speed, urban planning, urban renewal, Victor Gruen

They'd tamed rivers and bays, high plains and remote reaches of blackwater swamp where earlier roads dared not venture. You could set your cruise control (an automotive feature that would have been needless had the interstates not come along) and at seventy miles per hour, in climate-controlled comfort, summit the Sierra Nevada pass that claimed the Donner party. The year after the Ellipse dinner, his health failing, Turner sold the Arlington house and went to live with his son Marvin's family in Goldsboro, North Carolina. He had developed cancer and, as he neared and passed ninety, a slowly progressing dementia; still, when in January 1999 the Transportation Research Board named him the first recipient of its Frank Turner Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Transportation, he made it to Washington.


pages: 363 words: 123,076

The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, Capote, and the New Journalism Revolution by Marc Weingarten

1960s counterculture, Bonfire of the Vanities, British Empire, citizen journalism, cognitive dissonance, Donner party, East Village, Easter island, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Haight Ashbury, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Kickstarter, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, New Journalism, non-fiction novel, Norman Mailer, post-work, pre–internet, public intellectual, rent control, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Stewart Brand, upwardly mobile, working poor, yellow journalism

She was born in 1934, but her ancestors had migrated to California in the nineteenth century from points east such as Virginia, Arkansas, the Carolinas, and Illinois, places where the failed dreams of financial bounty led to a great migration to where the crops were rumored to grow as tall and hearty as poplar trees. They had endured long, grinding treks by covered wagon across the Oregon Trail and barely survived the Humboldt Sink in Nevada (where the Donner-Reed party met its garish end; Didion’s great-great-great grandmother Nancy Hardin Cornwall was a Donner party member), settling in California’s Central Valley, whose vast, flat, alluvial plains seemed to hold the promise of eternal prosperity. As a young child Didion heard the stories of her ancestors and their great struggles to tame this unsettled territory, forging new identities as farmers from the soil of the last undeveloped region in the country.


Parks Directory of the United States by Darren L. Smith, Kay Gill

1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, Asilomar, British Empire, California gold rush, clean water, company town, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, Donner party, El Camino Real, global village, Golden Gate Park, Hernando de Soto, indoor plumbing, mass immigration, Maui Hawaii, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, oil shale / tar sands, Oklahoma City bombing, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Southern State Parkway, Torches of Freedom, trade route, transcontinental railway, Works Progress Administration

Facilities: 154 developed family campsites, picnic areas, hiking and ski trails, nature trails, boat ramp access, visitor center, museum, exhibits (uu). Activities: Camping, fishing, boating, sailing, hiking, swimming, windsurfing, water-skiing, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing. Special Features: The illfated Donner Party, halted by heavy snows, camped here during the winter of 1846. Park’s Emigrant Trail Museum features exhibits on the Donner Party and area history. Near the museum is the Pioneer Monument and the Donner Party’s Murphy family cabin site. Activities: Camping, hiking, bicycling, fishing, swimming, surfing, guided tours. Special Features: Terrain includes a sandy beach, rocky tidepools, and stands of sycamore and oaks along El Capitán Creek.

Special Features: Northern end of California’s Gold Country; elevations range from 1,500 feet, around the golden foothills on the western slope, to the 9,400-foot high peaks of the Sierra crest. Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail; North Fork of the American River, a Wild and Scenic river; three forks of the Yuba River; excellent fishing at Jackson Meadows and Stampede reservoirs; historic sites from the Donner Party, the Gold Rush era, and prehistoric Native Americans. 3. National Forests and Grasslands PARKS DIRECTORY OF THE UNITED STATES—5th EDITION Size: Almost 1,000,000 acres. Location: Central Utah. Accessible by US 40, 50, 89, and 189; UT 35. Nearby cities/towns include American Fork, Heber, Pleasant Grove, Nephi, Provo, and Spanish Fork.

Facilities: 22 campsites, showers, modern restrooms, picnic areas, hiking trails, interpretive trails, OHV trails, equestrian trails. Activities: Camping, OHV riding, hiking, horseback riding, wildlife observation. Special Features: Park sits among rust-colored sand dunes which change shape and position with the prevailing winds. history. The Donner Party passed through in 1846; a year later Mormon pioneers, including Brigham Young, passed this way. ★4406★ EDGE OF THE CEDARS STATE PARK MUSEUM 660 West 400 North Blanding, UT 84511 Web: www.stateparks.utah.gov/park_pages/edge.htm Phone: 435-678-2238 Size: 16 acres. Elevation: 6,200 feet. Location: Within the city limits of Blanding.


pages: 385 words: 25,673

Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive ScrabblePlayers by Stefan Fatsis

deliberate practice, Donner party, East Village, forensic accounting, Golden Gate Park, Gödel, Escher, Bach, index card, ITER tokamak, junk bonds, Michael Milken, Neil Armstrong, Saturday Night Live, zero-sum game

To record the first step of my journey, we photographed the board. Weeks later, I called John Williams to propose a friendly game. My goal: to lose, and lose badly. After all, this was supposed to be a journey. Odysseus wandered around for ten years. Columbus’s crew nearly mutinied before he happened upon land. The Donner party starved in the mountains. “You just might win,” Williams says as we sit down to play in his midtown hotel room. “Yeah, right,” I reply, clinging to my script. Williams plays CARED to open the game, scoring 22 points. I draw a bingo — a play using all seven of one’s tiles, worth an extra 50 points — on my first turn: LEAPING, which I place below the last two letters of CARED, forming EL and DE.


Southwest USA Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Berlin Wall, Biosphere 2, Burning Man, carbon footprint, Columbine, Day of the Dead, Donner party, El Camino Real, friendly fire, G4S, haute couture, haute cuisine, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), low earth orbit, machine readable, off grid, off-the-grid, place-making, SpaceShipOne, supervolcano, trade route, transcontinental railway, Virgin Galactic, walkable city, Works Progress Administration, X Prize

Ski bunnies have several area resorts to pick from, including glam Northstar-at-Tahoe (800-466-6784; www.northstarattahoe.com; off Hwy 267; ); kid-friendly Sugar Bowl (530-426-9000; www.sugarbowl.com; off Hwy 40; ), cofounded by Walt Disney; and Royal Gorge (530-426-3871; www.royalgorge.com; off I-80; ), paradise for cross-country skiers. West of Hwy 89, Donner Summit is where the infamous Donner Party became trapped during the fierce winter of 1846–47. Led astray by their guidebook, less than half survived – by cannibalizing their dead friends. The grisly tale is chronicled at the museum inside Donner Memorial State Park (www.parks.ca.gov; Donner Pass Rd; entry per car $8, campsites $35; museum 9am-4pm daily year-round, campground mid-May–mid-Sep), where Donner Lake is popular with swimmers and windsurfers.

Eco-conscious Cedar House Sport Hotel (530-582-5655, 866-582-5655; www.cedarhousesporthotel.com; 10918 Brockway Rd; r incl breakfast $170-270; W) is green building-certified, and has an outdoor hot tub and stylishly modern boutique rooms (pet fee $50). For live jazz and wine, Moody’s Bistro & Lounge (530-587-8688; www.moodysbistro.com; 10007 Bridge St; dinner mains $18-40; 11:30am-9:30pm Sun-Thu, to 10pm Fri & Sat) sources locally ranched meats and seasonal produce. Down pints of ‘Donner Party Porter’ at Fifty Fifty Brewing Co (www.fiftyfiftybrewing.com; 11197 Brockway Rd) across the tracks. Getting There & Around To/From the Airport South Tahoe Express (866-898-2463; www.southtahoeexpress.com) runs frequent shuttles from Nevada’s Reno-Tahoe International Airport to Stateline (adult/child one way $27/15).


pages: 501 words: 145,097

The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible by Simon Winchester

British Empire, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, colonial rule, company town, cotton gin, discovery of the americas, distributed generation, Donner party, estate planning, Etonian, Ford Model T, full employment, Hernando de Soto, hive mind, invention of radio, invention of the telegraph, James Watt: steam engine, Joi Ito, Khyber Pass, Menlo Park, off-the-grid, plutocrats, safety bicycle, transcontinental railway, Works Progress Administration

Maybe he had at last found the answer, and he would take Judah up into the hills and have him gaze at a vista he had seen himself some days before, then let him draw what Doc Strong suspected were the inevitable conclusions. The two men went to the local livery stable and secured a pair of strong horses. They then started up the trail—unmarked, except for some relic scars of the Donner party and their rescuers of fourteen years before. It took some hours as they hacked their way through the sweet-smelling pines and over small creeks, gaining altitude steadily, the air cooling, the breeze rising. Finally they reached a summit, at eight thousand feet or so, and Doc Strong gestured to Judah to look before him, eastward, and to prepare to be amazed.


pages: 560 words: 158,238

Fifty Degrees Below by Kim Stanley Robinson

airport security, bioinformatics, bread and circuses, Burning Man, carbon credits, carbon tax, clean water, DeepMind, Donner party, full employment, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, iterative process, Kim Stanley Robinson, means of production, minimum wage unemployment, North Sea oil, off-the-grid, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Feynman, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, the scientific method

The stubborn ones were likely to die. The newspapers reported that a few hundred already had. Frank could scarcely believe some of the stories in the Post about the dumb things people had done and were still doing. They could be six inches from safety and not recognize it. It was as John Muir had said of the Donner Party; a perfectly fine winter base camp, botched by ineptitude. But they didn’t know. It was a technique, and if you didn’t have it you died. It wasn’t rocket science but it was mandatory. Frank had to be careful not to get careless himself. He stayed out all day every day, and part of him was beginning to think he had it wired, so that he spent longer sessions out.


pages: 522 words: 162,310

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, animal electricity, anti-communist, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, augmented reality, back-to-the-land, Bernie Sanders, British Empire, Burning Man, California gold rush, Celebration, Florida, centre right, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, corporate governance, cotton gin, Credit Default Swap, David Brooks, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, disinformation, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Donner party, Downton Abbey, Easter island, Edward Snowden, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, failed state, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, God and Mammon, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Herman Kahn, high net worth, illegal immigration, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, large denomination, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, McMansion, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, off-the-grid, Oklahoma City bombing, placebo effect, post-truth, pre–internet, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, reality distortion field, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart meter, Snapchat, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, sugar pill, Ted Kaczynski, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Timothy McVeigh, trade route, transcontinental railway, urban renewal, We are all Keynesians now, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, Y2K, young professional

The firm is actually not in the Redoubt but in a northern California ski town called Norden. As it happens, it’s just a short walk from a perfect historic site, the spot where the single best-known group of freedom-seeking, risk-taking, self-reliant wagon-train pioneers spent a winter in a snowbound mountain pass—the Donner Party, four dozen of whom survived, some by eating the corpses of their three dozen fellow pioneers. — SURVIVALISTS AND PREPPERS are wacky and sad. But: I do my thing and they do their thing, and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful. The fantasies they sincerely believe and elaborately enact don’t really affect my life or yours.


pages: 506 words: 167,034

Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut by Mike Mullane

affirmative action, Berlin Wall, blue-collar work, Boeing 747, dark matter, disinformation, Donald Trump, Donner party, Easter island, feminist movement, financial independence, Gene Kranz, invisible hand, Magellanic Cloud, Neil Armstrong, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Pepto Bismol, placebo effect, Potemkin village, publish or perish, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, space junk, space pen, Stephen Hawking, urban sprawl, Winter of Discontent, your tax dollars at work

Not that some of these excursions didn’t put us in peril, like the time we were deep into the mountains of southern New Mexico when the radiator boiled over. It was obvious from the virgin dust there had been no traffic for many days, possibly weeks, maybe never. This was long before the days of cell phones. There would be no call to a tow truck. We were facing Donner Party extinction. My dad, an expert at repairing planes, always carried an extensive set of tools in the car. Unfortunately, it seemed every time we broke down we were missing that one tool we needed. Apparently, our station wagon didn’t have the engine of a C-124. On this occasion, though, no tool was going to help us.


The Big Score by Michael S. Malone

Apple II, Bob Noyce, bread and circuses, Buckminster Fuller, Byte Shop, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, computer age, creative destruction, Donner party, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, El Camino Real, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, financial independence, game design, Isaac Newton, job-hopping, lone genius, market bubble, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, packet switching, plutocrats, RAND corporation, ROLM, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, tech worker, Teledyne, The Home Computer Revolution, transcontinental railway, Turing machine, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, Yom Kippur War

To pay lip service to professionalism, the society hired a fundraising consulting firm to poll the citizenry for their opinions. The Sunnyvale Historical Society was shocked by the results. It seemed that most of the people of Sunnyvale didn’t give half a damn that Martin Murphy and his family were among the first American settlers to cross the Sierra, or that they were among the rescuers of the Donner Party, or that, before it was covered with the Silicon Valley veneer of cement and asphalt, Santa Clara County had boasted some of the richest farmland in the world. For the vast majority of Sunnyvale’s population, the great local historical question was not why Martin Murphy had left Missouri in 1847 for California but why Dr.


Frommer's California 2009 by Matthew Poole, Harry Basch, Mark Hiss, Erika Lenkert

airport security, Asilomar, Bay Area Rapid Transit, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, Columbine, Donald Trump, Donner party, East Village, El Camino Real, European colonialism, Frank Gehry, gentleman farmer, gentrification, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, high-speed rail, housing crisis, indoor plumbing, Joan Didion, machine readable, Mason jar, mass immigration, Maui Hawaii, post-work, retail therapy, rolling blackouts, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Skype, South of Market, San Francisco, sustainable-tourism, transcontinental railway, urban sprawl, white picket fence, Works Progress Administration, Y Combinator

M any of these original steam engines are on display at the California S tate Railr oad Museum in Sacramento. CALIFORNIA IN DEPTH made the 4-month crossing in 1844. Over the next few years, several hundred Americans made the tr ek to California o ver the Sierra Nevada range via Truckee Pass, just north of Lake Tahoe. A memorial to the Donner Party—the most famous tragedy in the histor y of w estward migration— marks the site of the ill-fated trav elers. As the driv e to the w est increased, the U.S. go vernment sought to extend its control o ver M exican territor y nor th of the Rio Grande, the river that now divides the U nited S tates and M exico.

There’s much to see on the r estored city plaza as w ell. The San Juan Bautista State Historic Park comprises the old P laza Hotel with its fr ontier barr oom and furnished rooms; the Plaza Hall, its adjoining stables, and blacksmith shop; and the Castro House, where the Breen family lived after traveling here with the ill-fated Donner Party in 1846. Allow 1 1/2 to 2 hours to see the entir e plaza. A dmission to the par k buildings is $2 for adults, $1 for childr en ages 6 to 12 (separate fr om the mission admission). H ours are daily from 10am to 4:30pm. For more information, call & 831/623-4526. 2 MONTEREY 45 miles S of Santa Cruz; 116 miles S of San F rancisco; 335 miles N of Los Angeles Monterey is now famous as the site of the world’s longest-running jazz festival (p. 43, in the Calendar of E vents), which draws nearly 50,000 visitors annually for per formances by the likes of Tony B ennett, S onny R ollins, and B ranford M arsalis.


pages: 941 words: 237,152

USA's Best Trips by Sara Benson

Albert Einstein, California gold rush, car-free, carbon footprint, cotton gin, Day of the Dead, desegregation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Donner party, East Village, Frank Gehry, gentrification, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, haute couture, haute cuisine, if you build it, they will come, indoor plumbing, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, McMansion, mega-rich, New Urbanism, off-the-grid, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, side project, Silicon Valley, the High Line, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, urban renewal, urban sprawl, white flight, white picket fence, Works Progress Administration

Built in 1929 as the tallest building in the state, this musty old-school gambling hall with antler chandeliers and taxidermy on the walls gives a taste of Nevada before the grandeur of Steve Wynn and the flash of Cirque de Soleil. * * * Approaching the Sierra Nevada, swing north toward Truckee and Lincoln Hwy’s alternate route through the Donner Pass. In 1846, the Donner party of homesteaders was stranded here for months in 22ft of snow. Rescuers found only half the pioneers alive, surviving on boiled ox hides and their companions’ corpses. Off Hwy I-80, Donner Memorial Park (www.parks.ca.gov) offers lakeside campsites ideal for gruesome ghost stories. * * * Hwy 50 follows the Lincoln Hwy west from Ely through Nevada’s mesmerizing Basin and Range country 345 miles to California.


pages: 1,104 words: 302,176

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World) by Robert J. Gordon

3D printing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airline deregulation, airport security, Apple II, barriers to entry, big-box store, blue-collar work, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, clean water, collective bargaining, computer age, cotton gin, creative destruction, deindustrialization, Detroit bankruptcy, discovery of penicillin, Donner party, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, feminist movement, financial innovation, food desert, Ford Model T, full employment, general purpose technology, George Akerlof, germ theory of disease, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Golden age of television, government statistician, Great Leap Forward, high net worth, housing crisis, Ida Tarbell, immigration reform, impulse control, income inequality, income per capita, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, inflight wifi, interchangeable parts, invention of agriculture, invention of air conditioning, invention of the sewing machine, invention of the telegraph, invention of the telephone, inventory management, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, jitney, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, labor-force participation, Les Trente Glorieuses, Lewis Mumford, Loma Prieta earthquake, Louis Daguerre, Louis Pasteur, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market fragmentation, Mason jar, mass immigration, mass incarceration, McMansion, Menlo Park, minimum wage unemployment, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, Norbert Wiener, obamacare, occupational segregation, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, payday loans, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, pink-collar, pneumatic tube, Productivity paradox, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, refrigerator car, rent control, restrictive zoning, revenue passenger mile, Robert Solow, Robert X Cringely, Ronald Coase, school choice, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, Skype, Southern State Parkway, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, streetcar suburb, The Market for Lemons, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, traveling salesman, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, undersea cable, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, warehouse robotics, washing machines reduced drudgery, Washington Consensus, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, working poor, working-age population, Works Progress Administration, yellow journalism, yield management

One of these was William Underwood, who led the switch from glass jars to tin cans, perfected in the 1840s, and who would soon become famous for America’s first registered trademark, granted in 1867 to his Underwood’s deviled ham and turkey.20 Another of the earliest entrepreneurs of canned food was Gail Borden, whose entrepreneurial career was worthy of his contemporary, Horatio Alger: “According to legend, he had been shocked by the Donner Party disaster,”21 in which a group of pioneers snowbound in 1846 in the Sierra Nevada resorted to cannibalism for survival. Borden was determined to perfect a method for reducing or “condensing” food so that it would provide nourishment in a relatively small package. The invention which made his name and fortune was condensed milk, which he patented in 1856.


USA Travel Guide by Lonely, Planet

1960s counterculture, active transport: walking or cycling, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Asilomar, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, big-box store, bike sharing, Biosphere 2, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Burning Man, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, congestion pricing, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, cuban missile crisis, Day of the Dead, desegregation, Donald Trump, Donner party, Dr. Strangelove, East Village, edge city, El Camino Real, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, Ford Model T, Frank Gehry, gentleman farmer, gentrification, glass ceiling, global village, Golden Gate Park, Guggenheim Bilbao, Haight Ashbury, haute couture, haute cuisine, Hernando de Soto, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, immigration reform, information trail, interchangeable parts, intermodal, jitney, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, license plate recognition, machine readable, Mars Rover, Mason jar, mass immigration, Maui Hawaii, McMansion, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Neil Armstrong, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, off grid, off-the-grid, Quicken Loans, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, retail therapy, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, starchitect, stealth mode startup, stem cell, supervolcano, the built environment, The Chicago School, the High Line, the payments system, three-martini lunch, trade route, transcontinental railway, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, Virgin Galactic, walkable city, white flight, working poor, Works Progress Administration, young professional, Zipcar

Ski bunnies have several area resorts to pick from, including glam Northstar-at-Tahoe ( 800-466-6784; www.northstarattahoe.com; off Hwy 267) ; kid-friendly Sugar Bowl ( 530-426-9000; www.sugarbowl.com; off Hwy 40) , cofounded by Walt Disney; and Royal Gorge ( 530-426-3871; www.royalgorge.com; off I-80) , paradise for cross-country skiers. West of Hwy 89, Donner Summit is where the infamous Donner Party became trapped during the fierce winter of 1846–47. Led astray by their guidebook, less than half survived – by cannibalizing their dead friends. The grisly tale is chronicled at the museum inside Donner Memorial State Park (www.parks.ca.gov; Donner Pass Rd; per car/campsites $8/35; museum 9am-4pm year-round, campground mid-May–mid-Sep) , where Donner Lake is popular with swimmers and windsurfers.

Ecoconscious Cedar House Sport Hotel ( 530-582-5655; www.cedarhousesporthotel.com; 10918 Brockway Rd; r incl breakfast $170-270; ) is green building-certified, and has an outdoor hot tub and stylishly modern boutique rooms (pet fee $50). For live jazz and wine, Moody ’ s Bistro & Lounge ( 530-587-8688; www.moodysbistro.com; 10007 Bridge St; dinner mains $18-40; 11:30am-9:30pm Sun-Thu, to 10pm Fri & Sat) sources locally ranched meats and seasonal produce. Down pints of ‘Donner Party Porter’ at Fifty Fifty Brewing Co (www.fiftyfiftybrewing.com; 11197 Brockway Rd) across the tracks. Getting There & Around South Tahoe Express ( 866-898-2463; www.southtahoeexpress.com) runs frequent shuttles from Nevada’s Reno-Tahoe International Airport to Stateline (one way adult/child $27/15).


pages: 1,437 words: 384,709

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Able Archer 83, Albert Einstein, Arthur Eddington, Brownian motion, Charles Lindbergh, cuban missile crisis, death from overwork, Donner party, Eddington experiment, Ernest Rutherford, Etonian, fixed income, full employment, God and Mammon, Isaac Newton, jitney, John von Neumann, Louis Pasteur, nuclear winter, publish or perish, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, the scientific method, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, Works Progress Administration

Books by RICHARD RHODES NONFICTION Hedy’s Folly:The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of the Most Beautiful Woman in the World The Twilight of the Bombs Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race John James Audubon: The Making of an American Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist Visions of Technology: An Anthology Deadly Feasts: Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague Trying To Get Some Dignity: Stories of Triumph Over Childhood Abuse Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb How To Write: Advice and Reflections Nuclear Renewal: Common Sense About Energy Making Love: An Erotic Odyssey A Hole in the World: An American Boyhood Farm: A Year in the Life of an American Farmer Looking for America: A Writer’s Odyssey The Ozarks The Inland Ground: An Evocation of the American Middle West FICTION Sons of Earth The Last Safari Holy Secrets The Ungodly: A Novel of the Donner Party We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster eBook. * * * Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Simon & Schuster. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP or visit us online to sign up at eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com PHOTO CREDITS 1.