An archive of research on historic trails and roads
Raymond Borchers of Lincoln Nebraska transferred the Mullan Road route from early township survey maps to modern county maps, all in a time before digital mapping software, GPS receivers, and Internet access to the complete set of Government Land Office survey maps.
ContributionsDr. Rich Buswell, a retired doctor, has spent 46 years researching and locating the Mullan Road. In his formative years, he and his family herded cattle in the Mullan Pass (Montana) area sparking his interest in the historic route. Using General Land Office Cadastral Survey maps and extensive boots-on-ground exploration, he determined the route of the Mullan Military Road in Elliston-Helena-Wolf Creek area.
ContributionsRobert H. Dunsmore was born in Kellogg, Idaho, and has lived all but two years in northern Idaho's Silver Valley. He has spent years researching the Mullan Military Road and Yellowstone Trail, and has assembled a large collection of maps, quotations, photos, and bibliographies for these historic routes.
Using old maps, diaries, Mullan's reports, and boots-on-the-ground research, Dunsmore created an 8-panel display of the Mullan Road between Spokane, Washington and St. Regis, Montana for the Staff House Museum in Kellogg, Idaho. The large panels include a detailed map, photographs, and comments by road builders and travelers.
The Eakins have been students of the Mullan Road for several years. Recently, they achieved their goal to locate and describe every monument, statue, and interpretive sign along the Mullan Road. They have documented each item, organized by state, and include photographs, GPS coordinates, and descriptions.
ContributionsSteve is a retired Emeritus Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. He has been researching, locating, and GPS-documenting Historic Trails for the past 32 years. He grew up along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail and the Nez Perce National Historic Trail at Weippe and Powell, Idaho and at Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley in Montana. His method of research is to use GIS tools to do approximate location of trails with the aid of original journals and maps, and GLO Plat maps from the National Archives. Then he spends several weeks each summer tent camping and hiking to locating the actual trail tread and document it with GPS.
He has an extensive collection of over 3000 trail photos. His trail documents include most of the historic trails of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and Utah, such as the Oregon- California Trails, government explorations, Lewis and Clark, Nez Perce 1877 war trail, Lolo Trail National Historic Landmark, Ice Age Trail, Virginia City and Lewiston Wagon Road, and many others.
Kris is a semi-retired computer science/information systems college instructor and author. In addition to managing this website, he is the editor of several other sites including: Discovering Lewis and Clark and Mullan Road Today.
Kris worked for publisher Pearson as an author and editor. He was an author for the GO! series and, more extensively, the Skills for Success series. Both series focus on Microsoft Office and Windows related topics. He was also the series editor and face of the Skills for Success series for many years.
At Spokane Falls Community College, Kris taught information systems related courses including web programming, Office applications, database theory, computer forensics, and computer ethics and law.