Ribbon Cutting
Clint Gilchrist, President of the Sublette County Historic Preservation Board, cuts the red ribbon to open the new historical park. Founding partners who worked for the previous four years to help with making the park a reality stand with him. Photos by Terry Allen.
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Food tent
Grand opening attendees enjoyed a Dutch Oven campfire lunch with home-made biscuits and desserts. The Pinedale Lions Club helped with serving and preparing the lunch.
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Grand Opening of the Lander Trail-New Fork River Crossing Historical Park
Interprets an emigrant river crossing site along the Lander Trail, part of the California-Oregon Trail used in the mid-1800s
by Pinedale Online! Photos by Terry Allen
June 25, 2014
The grand opening celebration of the new Lander Trail New Fork River Crossing Historical Park was held Saturday, June 21, 2014. A free lunch of campfire stew, home-made biscuits and desserts was served at noon. A ceremony to recognize contributions of partners was held after the lunch, ending with a ribbon cutting. Speakers included Don Simpson, State Director Wyoming BLM, Mary Hopkins, Wyoming State Historic Preservation Officer, Aaron Mahr, Director NPS National Trail Intermountain Region, Nancy Brown, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and Travis Boley, Oregon-California Trails Association. After the ceremony, visitors enjoyed exploring the Park and information tables featuring emigrant artifacts recovered at the Park during archeological investigations in 2011 and 2012.
From 1859-1869 tens of thousands of emigrants used the Lander Cut-off trail through the upper Green River Valley on their way to Oregon and California. The trail is part of the national designated historic trail system of the California-Oregon Trails. After making the difficult river crossing, many emigrants stopped to camp at the park to rest themselves and their animals, and catch up on cooking, washing and chores. Numerous emigrant diary accounts talk about the river crossing and camping at the location of the new historical park.
Visitors now have a unique opportunity to experience the river setting much as emigrants encountered 150 years ago. Nine interpretive panels along a one-mile rustic nature trail focus on the daily lives of the emigrants in their own words using dozens of Lander Trail diary accounts. The park is owned and managed by the Sublette County Historical Society, parent organization of the Museum of the Mountain Man in Pinedale.
The park has been developed by the Sublette County Historical Society with support of more than twenty federal, state, local, non-profit, corporate and private organizations. Thanks to unique agreements with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), purchase of the property was funded by donations from Shell, Ultra Resources, and PacifiCorp to mitigate impact of development on the setting of the Lander Trail through the Pinedale Anticline.
On Sunday, June 22 at 1pm, the National Park Service and Sublette County Historical Society hosted a charette at the Pinedale library to concept a phase II development plan. A draft of the plan was presented to the public on Wednesday, June 26 at 6pm at the Pinedale Library.
The Park is located on Paradise Road, 14 miles south of Hwy 191 from Boulder and one mile north of Highway 351. More information, directions and updates can be found at www.NewForkPark.org.
Photos by Terry Allen
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