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49er's Making it West

There were few places to resupply after starting the trip, so any traveling party would need to pack enough food for the entire journey of four or five months, plus some extra to avoid the fate of the Donner party of 1846. Fortunately, guidebooks written at the time provided potential travelers with descriptions of the journey and suggestions for provisions. Conlin presents work done by historian John Mack Faragher, who surveyed several guidebooks and compiled a composite list of the food supplies required for a four person party. Most parties had some type of firearm, usually a rifle and about 250 rounds of ammunition.

It is estimated that a basic set of provisions consisted of the following: 600 pounds flour 120 pounds biscuit 400 pounds bacon 200 pounds lard 200 pounds dried beans 120 pounds dried fruit 60 pounds coffee 40 pounds salt 8 pounds black pepper 8 pounds saleratus (a chemical evener) 4 pounds tea Assuming a 125 day crossing, a daily ration would be something like 1.2 pounds of flour, 0.8 pounds of bacon, 0.4 pounds of lard, 0.4 pounds of dried beans, and a quarter pound of dried fruit, which could be estimated to be about 7,000 calories per day, of which 2,200 came from bacon and 1,600 from lard (Conlin reports 10,000 calories per day but his appendix appears to have some calculation errors that lead to a few thousand extra calories).

Keep in mind, however, that lard was also used as axle grease and as fuel for lamps. For reference, the USDA estimates that the average American diet in 2004 consisted of 3,900 calories per day. To add some variety to the rather monotonous diet, emigrants brought whatever preserved fruit, jams, and alcoholic drinks they could fit into the wagon, and along the way caught fish where they could and hunted for bison, prairie dog, squirrel and various other animals. From other travelers and Native Americans, they learned which berries and plants were edible. Although the diet is particularly lacking in vitamin C, some argue that scurvy (a debilitating and often fatal disease caused by lack of vitamin C) was rare along the trail, probably because the dried fruit contained a small amount of the needed vitamin and because it takes many months of a low vitamin C diet to become scorbutic. Scurvy didn’t start to appear until a bit later, after the emigrants had been in the mines for a few months.

Prospecting supplies were not purchased until they arrived in the gold fields.

Contributed by Victor Gauer