Lolo Trail History and Cartography Part 7
Contributed by Steve F. Russell
This report pertains to the Lewis and Clark National Historic Landmark, the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, the Nez Perce National Historic Trail. It also applies to all the other trails in the Lolo Trail System: Northern Nez Perces Trail in 1866, Bird-Truax Trail 1866, Lewiston and Virginia City Wagon Road 1866, Route of John Work Fur Brigade 1831, Route of General O. O. Howard and the Nez Perce in 1877, John Mullan 1854, and other trails.
When I began my Lolo Trail System research in 1985, I started gathering all the historical map resources I could find. The ones I used up to 1992, are included in this report. I kept reorganizing the maps up to around 2001. In the early days of my hiking the trail, I carried topo maps of the area I hiked and made notations on them. During the subsequent winter, I added notation on them to try to create maps with complete detail on the old trails. In those days, I did not have a GPS, so I carried a compass, pace counter, and barometric altimeter so I could locate my position on the topo maps, using the elevation profile (Course and Distance). In the subsequent years, I had good-quality GPS equipment so I created newer maps with much better
precision on trail and camp locations.
My motivation in preparing this small report on my early Lolo Trail System research was to show the baseline research, which led to my subsequent creation of precision map sets.
For information on Trail Research Methodology, Inference in Historical Trail Research, and this author, refer to the Appendix that follows the map pages.
Steve F. Russell
