Albert Packer had nothing to do with California as far as I know but his is a great story.
Packer was a prospector in Colorado. He and five others went into the Rockies above Denver to look for a big strike but instead they were caught by a snowstorm and trapped. Like the Donner party before them, they had no food. In the end only Packer came out of the Rockies and the other's bodies were found later.
Packer was arrested, tried and convicted of Cannibalism, becoming the first and for a long time the only person so convicted in the U.S.
At his sentencing the judge is reported to have said to him, "There were only seven Democrats in the County and you, you son-of-a-bitch, you ate five of them!"
Albert Packer's story remained a footnote in history for nearly a hundred years. When the University of Colorado in Boulder remodeled the Student Union, the Student Body voted on a new name for the Cafeteria, The "Albert Packer Cafeteria."
Who says the students today don't know what's important?
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