The Donner Party, led by George and Jacob Donner and James F. Reed, passed here and crossed the Jordan River nearby about September 2, 1846. The party, consisting of 81 persons, 35 of them children, was delayed 2 weeks building a road via Emigration Canyon. After losing some wagons and many animals crossing the Great Salt Lake Desert, they became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where 36 of them perished that winter.