[or-roots] Oregon Trail, or not...

[Leslie Chapman]

Bob;

Glad you brought that up, in my earlier reply I didn't think to mention that
there are reasons to find blazes on trees besides trails and immigrant
roads.

Unfortunately this was a while back so she is unclear exactly of the nature
of the blazes or why the anthropologist thought they were a historical
trail. I would point out that if you see a blaze line in the forest and it
goes in a straight line without regard to terrain, it is a survey line, not
a set of trail blazes. If you have a number of line marking blazes it will
become obvious as you go along the line single blazed trees will face the
line, a tree falling on the line will have a blaze on both sides of the tree
where the line runs through it. Fore example if you find a 4 foot dia tree
and the blazes as you imagine a line of sight through the two blazes is one
foot from the left edge of the tree, that is where the line is. Typically
though the blazes will be centered on the tree if the line goes through it,
because when you are blazing line you do not have a specific enough fix on
the actual line to be that picky.

Les C

----Original Message-----
From: or-roots-admin at sosinet.sos.state.or.us
[mailto:or-roots-admin at sosinet.sos.state.or.us]On Behalf Of Robert L.
Casebeer
Sent: Monday, May 31, 2004 7:42 PM
To: or-roots at sosinet.sos.state.or.us; shade at nu-world.com
Subject: Re: [or-roots] Oregon Trail, or not...


Heather, neither the Oregon Trail or the Applegate Trail came anywhere close
to Diamond Lake. The closest route emigrants used, and very few of them, was
over the Willamette Pass.  There were folk who came up the North Umpqua in
the 1860s trying to see if they could get a wagon road up the river to the
California Trail that is now Highway 97...but to no avail.
    Any blazes in that area that were not on an old abandoned trail, were
probably from a way trail which only sported blazes.  My father was the
district guard of the North Umpqua Ranger District in the 1930s and built
the USFS warehouse in the 1950s, so I am fairly familiar with USFS practice
at about the same time those blazes would have been created.  Bob Casebeer
-----Original Message-----
From: Heather and Pat <shade at nu-world.com>
To: or-roots at sosinet.sos.state.or.us <or-roots at sosinet.sos.state.or.us>
Date: Saturday, May 29, 2004 7:29 AM
Subject: [or-roots] Oregon Trail, or not...


Hello,
I've been lurking, but enjoy everyone genealogy tales.. You learn a lot
about the state history by listening... Anyway since we're mentioning the
trail and ruts, (by the way I liked that picture from Baker City... Great
learning center there...) I am reminded when I was working on the Diamond
Lake Ranger District (it's near Crater lake) of working on a thinning
project and finding trail blazes.  Our anthropologist said she would look
into what they may have been but I never heard if they were from the Oregon
Trail or something different.  (To reassure everyone those trees were not
taken and were protected with a buffer zone...)
  If anyone knows the area, HWY 138 east runs through that area, do you know
if that was a younger trail then the rush of the 1830 and 40s or about that
time frame?  I lived up there for 22 years and I don't ever remember hearing
about that sort of stuff.

Heather
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