The ill-fated Donner-reed party, California immigrants, passed here about September 10, 1846 and continued northwesterly attempting to follow the Hastings Cutoff across the Great Salt Desert.
Feed and water were exhausted, thirty six oxen died or were lost, several wagons were cached or abandoned. Struggling on, they recuperated in the "Valley of Fifty Springs" but were later overwhelmed by early snows in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Thirty six of the eighty one persons died before rescue parties arrived.
Caches mentioned by Captain Howard Stansbury were located in 1933 by the Grantsville High School.
