Research Task: 8327CFC.2.0
Task Manager: Stephen Germaine
In 1843, wagon trains of pioneers began journeying from Missouri along the only corridor that provided access to Oregon, Idaho, Washington, California, and Nevada: the Oregon-California Trail. It is estimated that over the next 25 years, as many as half a million people made this historic journey along the trail, which traversed parts of Wyoming. Although to a lesser extent, the trail was still being used in the early 1900s. In 1998, Mormon handcart companies began reenacting their ancestors’ historic westward trips, resulting in short-duration but intense use of certain trail sections. Because the trail is considered a historic relic, there is some concern that intense use of wagons, handcarts, and motorized vehicles during these reenactments, as well as year-round use by off-highway vehicles, may alter the trail’s historic state. Much of the trail is encompassed by U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands; thus, BLM managers need to understand the effects of current trail usage and develop defensible threshold levels of use that will allow the trail to remain relatively intact. In this task, scientists will quantify those effects and work with BLM field staff to compare the number, duration, and types of users along various segments of the trail to assess the impacts of each use type, including combined uses. These data will be used to derive “use thresholds” above which alteration of the trail from its historic state would occur.
For more information contact Stephen Germaine
U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://www.fort.usgs.gov/Research/research_tasks.asp
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