New Picnic Tables

Picnikers enjoy the new tables.

View from the picnic shelter inclues Baker Valley and the Elkhorn Range.

Trail Tenders recently purchased several new picnic tables for the picnic shelter at the Interpretive Center. For twenty years, it's been one of the most scenic spots around for a great picnic; and now, you can enjoy the view and lunch with no splinters!!!

Trails Through Time Exhibit

South Pass by Bob Wick

A special photography exhibit titled "Trails Through Time: Contemporary Photography of the Oregon Trail" is now in the Flagstaff Gallery, through November 12.   With over 50 images from 16 photographers at over two dozen locations along the Trail, the collection of images captures how the trail looks today.  Photographers were invited to submit photos along the theme of reimagining the Oregon Trail, and capture what a pioneer might have chosen to record if they'd had modern camera equipment in their wagons.

Scenes from Labor Day Weekend Wagon Encampment

We had a great wagon train encampment, with several hundred visitors, good weather, cooking, mountain men, ox drover and team, blackpowder shooting, trade camp, mountain men, medicine on the trail, music and dancing,  and games from the Trail Days.

Mountain man Mike skinned a deer hide to make some rawhide to back a bow.  He wet the skin, and then scraped off hair and first level of the skin.  It takes about an hour to do this. Although there are different techniques, he shared that this is one of the simplest for making rawhide.

Brian and Charlotte showed the types of food and basic "mess kit" used by pioneers with limited space on their wagons.  Dried foods, coffee, tea, and the versatile cast iron cookpot. Not a lot of culinary variety, but it kept the pioneers going.

Kelly and Grace cooked beans and served biscuits, sticking to authentic cooking techniques and cookware available in the 1850s.  Notice the tinware pans and canisters?  This is what was used before plastic storage containers were available.  Crockery was also used, but tinware was unbreakable, and kept out rodents and insects. Wooden bowls were also unbreakable - important for bumpy wagon travel. Because there was not always enough fuel or enough time to build a hot fire for cooking a pot of beans, pioneers might make a big pot of beans and a big batch of biscuits every three days or so, keep the leftovers in the pot in the wagon, and eat cold meals the next few days.

This young man is checking out the equivalent of a frontier shopping mall....this is how mountain men might have set out trade goods at a rendezvous or fort along the Trail.  Beads, firearms and knives, clothing and blankets were prime trade goods.