It's so easy to find something to eat now on Donner Pass Road or in the town of Truckee. Things were not so easy 175 years ago for the migrants stuck at the foot of the mountains. They had to do something that no human should ever have to do.

Patrick Breen, Diary Entry, February 26, 1847:

"Martha's jaw swelled with the toothache: hungry times in camp; plenty hides, but the folks will not eat them. We eat them with a tolerable good appetite. Thanks be to Almighty God. Amen. Mrs Murphy said here yesterday that [she] thought she would Commence on Milt. & eat him. I don't [think] that she has done so yet; it is distressing. The Donners, 4 days ago, told the California folks that they [would] commence to eat the dead people if they did not succeed, that day or next, in finding their cattle, [which were] then under ten or twelve feet of snow, & [the Donners] did not know the spot or near it; I suppose they have done so ere this time."