Titles

There are SO many things to see at the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center at the top of Flagstaff Hill just outside of Baker City, Oregon!  Outside they have a circle of wagons with interpretive signs explaining the different kinds of wagons (innumerable!) "Traditionally the wagon beds were painted blue and the undercarriages red..."  Who knew?  I mean, on the TV shows and movies I don't think any of them were painted - and how many of us get our history from those sources!

Inside there are sign titles like:

The Free Soil Party
African American Homesteads
Railroads and the Homestead Movement
Oh Give Me A Home (The ballad of the homestead movement, original lyrics, 1873)
Starving to Death On My Government Claim (a bachelor's story)

and stories of entire families:
The Chandler Family (A Century of Ranching in Baker Valley)
Arthur and Ray Boyd
The Warner Family
The Baldock Family (One of Baker County's First Homesteads)

Stories on "Speculation and Fraud, Unintended Consequences and Cheating," Barbed Wire, the Song Don't Fence Me In...

Standard homesteads were 160 acres.  How big is an acre?  There's an interpretive sign to explain that:
One acre is almost as big as a 100 yard football field.  A standard homestead was 1/2 mile in length on either side.  The sign also explains the process of homesteading.  (In Texas, we still get a Homestead Exemption on our county taxes if we apply for it.  That law is based on the federal law, but there is no federal land in Texas, no Bureau of Land Management, so if you homesteaded in Texas it was by Texas law.)

Once again we were treated to a rare event:  a musical historian and her brother put on a show for us playing different instruments and music from the 1850's.

I'm tellin' ya' folks, you gotta take vacations and stop at every museum you can to find the true history of America!  I am a HUGE fan of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States, but the true history of America is it's people.  You find that in spades here!

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