In 1846, he and his wife Amanda Esrey and other family members made the 5-month journey across the country, arriving in Wheatland, California, on October 4, where they stayed for about a month before settling near Sutter's Fort in the Sacramento Valley.
[2] During their trek west, they encountered the Donner Party, who invited Rhoads and others to join their group to take a new route that was supposedly shorter.
They had to carry supplies and provisions on foot for 80 miles (129 km) through the snow,[2] but were able to find some survivors on February 18, 1847, who greeted them with the question, "Are you men from California or do you come from heaven?
Rhoads and his team led twenty-one people, mostly women and children, out of the Sierra Nevada, but three died along the return trip.
The rescuers had left caches of food for use on the way back, but one of them had been eaten by animals, and they had to consume rawhide from their snowshoes for three days until they returned to their base camp.