OCTA welcomes volunteers, professionals, educators, students and anyone interested in preserving historic emigrant trails to join our preservation activities.
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OCTA Preservation Committee
Under a preservation policy adopted by the OCTA Board in 2013, the focus on preservation will be at the chapter level. Each chapter preservation officer(s) will be on the national committee and the chair of the committee is the National Preservation Officer.
The OCTA Preservation Committee (Winter 2022) membership:
OCTA National Preservation Officer – John Winner
- California-Nevada – John Winner
- Colorado-Cherokee Trail – Ethan Gannett
- Utah Crossroads – Matt Ivory
- Gateway – Wendell Ganstrom
- Idaho – Don Wind (East) and Dave Price (West)
- Kanza – Charlie Weickert
- Nebraska – Linda Tacey
- Northwest – Dave Welch (B2H) Jenny Miller (East) Wendell Baskin (West)
- Southern Trails – Mark Howe
- Trails Head – Pat Traffas
- Wyoming – Randy Brown, Fern Linton and Julia Stuble
Projects & Activities
The Importance of Setting
Wilderness provides a unique experience and the essence of this experience is the lack of modern intrusions. Advocates and visitors have long recognized the importance of preserving landscape, and have fought for more than a hundred years to set aside areas where today’s visitor finds a setting basically unchanged over the centuries. I suspect something within us preserves the memory of our ancestor’s first intrusion into the natural landscape.
Preservation of the Trails and Settings in Wyoming
We have struggled for the past twenty years to protect key segments of the trails from oil and gas development with some success. We are better about mitigating adverse impacts, but the bottom line is always the same: loss of trail and setting. Fortunately, the oil and gas activities are limited to certain areas and as a result some other areas remain relatively pristine.
Renewable Energy and the Oregon Trail
Most of us agree that the pursuit of renewable energy sources is a necessity. We may not agree on the justification, but in the end the need is there. This recognized need has resulted in a rush to build renewable energy sources not unlike the oil field developments in the late 1800s and early 1900s. We are still living with the adverse impacts of those developments. Are we repeating the same mistake today?
Resolution on Wind Energy Development
Under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, the first priority when seeking to mitigate an adverse impact is avoidance. We therefore recommend that both wind farms and transmission lines be placed in areas not visible from the National Historic Trails and historic trails authorized for study under the Public Lands Act of 2009, except in areas already heavily impacted by other development.
Lander – Pinedale Anticline Case Study
“The Pinedale Anticline Project Area (PAPA) is one of the newest and most productive gas fields in the continental United States with estimates of 20-25 Trillion Cubic Feet of Natural Gas that could be recovered.” (BLM project description)
Lander RMP Executive Summary
This Draft Resource Management Plan (RMP) and Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) describes and analyzes alternatives for the planning and management of public lands and resources administered by the BLM, Lander Field Office.
Trail Inventory Project
Presentation at the PNTS Historic Trails Workshop, October 30, 2014
The Trail Inventory Project is summarized. Included is a description of the project’s content and work accomplished to date. The project’s objective is to record the condition of the Oregon Trail in Oregon in the summer of 2014. Both the condition of the trail and its setting are documented through survey forms and pictures. Data are organized by township, range and section.
Trail Inventory Project Survey Forms
Four survey forms were used to collected data for the Trail Inventory Project (TIP). The forms cover trail segments and sites as wells as the setting. A fourth form is designed to collect data on the kiosks built for the Oregon Trail Sesquicentennial in 1993. All data is entered into an Access database.