June 15, 2011

IN THIS ISSUE

Rock Springs Convention: August

8-13, 2011

In Pursuit of a Dream Now in

Distribution

Help Us Reach the Widest Audience Possible for In Pursuit of

a Dream

" Endangered" Article

in July 2011 Issue of Trail West

Hollywood Offers Up Feature Film

"Meek's Cutoff"

New Fork River Project on Lander

Road in Wyoming Now Complete

Rock Springs Convention: August 8-13, 2011

The countdown is on! In less than two months, OCTAns from the world over will converge on Rock Springs and Green River, Wyoming for its 29th annual convention. The standard tours, speakers, workshops, and banquets are all set to go, and the convention planning team has also added a special new wrinkle this year: History Day, which is set for Saturday, August 13. The Holiday Inn and Western Wyoming Community College (WWCC) in Rock Springs and Exepedition Island in Green River are the main convention sites.

Kicking off the week on August 7 and 8 are pre-convention tours, which will take attendees on the Overland Trail, Cherokee Trail, the Sublette Cutoff, the Seminoe Trail, the Lander Cutoff, and the Mormon- from into southwest Wyoming. OCTA's National Board of Directors will meet on Tuesday, August 9 at WWCC, with an opening convention reception to follow that evening.

The convention gets into full swing on the morning of Wednesday, August 10, when Wyoming State BLM Director Don Simpson will address the membership. Dr. Fred Gowans, emeritus professor at University who has written extensively on the fur trade, will deliver the keynote address. His talk will focus on the era of the mountain man.

Other speaker highlights of the week include:

-Todd Guenther, an archaeologist and former curator at both South Pass City and the Lander Pioneer Museum. He teaches anthropology, history, and museum studies and Central Wyoming College and will discuss the historical importance of South Pass

-Clint Gilchrist, president of the Sublette County Historical Society, who will discuss the New Fork River Crossing on the Lander Road

-Tom Rea, VP of OCTA's Wyoming Chapter, will discuss land use and ownership in the Martin's Cove area

-Gary Long, author of The Journey of the James G. Willie Handcart Company, will discuss that Mormon handcart trek

-Lee Whiteley, author of The Cherokee Trail: Bent's Old Fort to , will speak on the Cherokee Trail

Thursday, August 11 and Friday August 12 will be devoted to bus tours, which will take attendees to South Pass, Pinedale, Browns Park and Fort Bridger. Authors Night is from 7-9 PM on Thursday night and will include a performance by the OCTA Band.

After tours are commplete on Friday, attendees will have an opportunity to attend a dedication ceremony for preserved Overland Trail ruts at Sage Elementary School in Rock Springs. The dedication will begin at 5:30 PM and will be followed by a special screening of OCTA's multiple award-winning docudrama In Pursuit of a Dream at the WCCC Theater at 7:30 PM.

Saturday, August 13 will feature a daylong "Western History Day" at Expedition Island in Green River. Some cast members of In Pursuit of a Dream will be encamped on the island, which will also feature period music, crafts, hide tanning, spinning, Mormon handcarts, a sheep wagon, re-enactors, and other fun and informative activities. Families from the entire region will be highly encouraged to attend this event.

For a full description of the week's activities, be sure to see the online convention booklet and then register online on OCTA's secure server.

In Pursuit of a Dream Now In Distribution

OCTA's multiple award-winning docudrama In Pursuit of a Dream entered into distribution in March with Landmark Media, one of the nation's premier distributors of social studies multimedia materials. Winning the Oregon Heritage Excellence Award, a Spur Award, a Silver Remi at WorldFest, and the Best Experimental Film Award at the Oregon Film Festival, the movie was also a Finalist at the International Family Film Festival in Hollywood and the Kids First! Film Festival.

The package includes both the complete 84-minute movie on one DVD and a second DVD containing a dozen focused clips not featured in the movie. These clips focus on things like trail preservation, oxen, relations between emigrants and Native Americans, and river crossings.

Ordering information is at Landmark's website, where the two DVD set can be ordered for $39. Individual schools and school districts will pay more for a "right of public exhibtion" license.Landmark is nearly ready to launch a new website any day now, so be careful to follow the ordering instructions that appear there now. OCTA E-News will alert you once Landmark's new website launches.

In Pursuit of a Dream is also garnering positive press, as evidenced by a review in the recent issue of the Big Sky Journal.

This 84-minute documentary packs more excitement than a reality TV show (without the foolishness of adults arguing over coconuts and forming back-stabbing cliques). The teens, led by three teachers, walk all day long or ride in wagons, cook over campfires, and when their wagons are deemed too heavy to continue, they make decisions about what to jettison, and live with the consequences of poor choices - just as 400,000 Westbound migrants did between 1841 and 1870. The primary difference between then and now? In 1850, the country through which the emigrants traveled was largely uninhabited by humans. Nowadays, it takes more effort to find uninhabited vistas. But the crew succeeds on this score - the film is shot on the last remaining stretch of the Oregon and California , thanks largely to preservation-minded private landowners and the Oregon and California Trails Association which, in conjunction with Boston Productions, produced the documentary. (Sadly, the rest of the 2,000-mile trail has been obliterated by the outward seep of modern civilization.) Throughout the long journey, life lessons are learned, tears are shed, laughter is shared, and without being aware of it, the participants live history and learn, right along with the viewer, the importance of preserving what's left of the Oregon and California trails. Feel like hopping aboard a ? "In Pursuit of a Dream" is the next best thing - buffalo chips not included. For more information, trek on over to: www.inpursuitofadream.org and be sure to support OCTA at: www.octa-trails.org.

For information on Big Sky Journal, visit http://www.bigskyjournal.com/.

Help Us Reach the Widest Audience Possible for In Pursuit of a Dream

Now that In Pursuit of a Dream is in nation-wide distribution, you can help us ensure that sales start off with a bang. Do you know someone responsible for teaching social studies or trail history? Do you know of a school district that teaches trail history? Do you know someone who would appreciate having a copy of this award winning movie? If so, email OCTA HQ at [email protected] with contact information for such people or institutions. Our distributor will then mail them ordering information. Though our distributor has a wide network of past clients, they surely do not know all of the potential outlets for trail materials nearly as well as the collective membership of OCTA. Let's help make certain In Pursuit of a Dream winds up in the hands of everyone who wants a copy!

July 2011 Issue of True West Features

" Endangered" Article

OCTA Lifetime Member and News From the Plains editor Candy Moulton has a feature eight-page article in the just-released July 2011 issue of True West Magazine. After a lifetime of traveling the trails, Candy has become quite familiar with the various threats facing historic trails. Here, she has compiled a "Top 10 List" of endangered sites, including:

-South Pass, Wyoming -Rocky Ridge, Wyoming -Ladd Hill, Oregon -The Sublette Cutoff & Lander Road in Wyoming -The Iowa and Sac & Fox Mission and Trail Ruts, Kansas -Chimney Rock, Nebraska -The End of the Oregon Trail Center, Oregon -various sites along the route of the Ruby Pipeline and Gateway West Transmission Line in Idaho and Wyoming -Scotts Bluff, Fort Mitchell, Robidoux Pass and Horse Creek Treaty sites in Nebraska -Sweetwater Valley, Wyoming

This is by no means a comprehensive list, and we all surely know of other sites, such as Holt Canyon and Mountain Meadows in southern Utah, to name but one. As Candy says in her article, "You may write letters to this publication....telling me how wrong-headed I am. Good. Please do! If I make you think about these historic places----and perhaps even criticize my choices----then I have succeeded in my effort to preserve them, because I have engaged you in the work of caring for our Western lands.

You can order a copy of True West for $5.99 (+S&H) by calling OCTA HQ at (888) 811- 6282.

Hollywood Offers up Feature Film "Meek's Cutoff"

The year is 1845, the earliest days of the Oregon Trail, and a wagon train of three families has hired mountain man to guide them over the Cascade Mountains. Claiming to know a shortcut, Meek leads the group on an unmarked path across the high plain desert, only to become lost in the dry rock and sage. Over the coming days, the emigrants face the scourges of hunger, thirst and their own lack of faith in one another's instincts for survival. When a Native American wanderer crosses their path, the emigrants are torn between their trust in a guide who has proven himself unreliable and a man who has always been seen as a natural born enemy.

Faced with dwindling water supplies, mounting uncertainty about Meek's dependability, and growing disagreement over a captured Native American, the group begins to fray. Director Kelly Reichardt's breathtaking vision recasts the mythology of the western. Focusing on simple rhythms and daily tasks, she conveys the families' routines (boiling water, reloading a musket, or replacing a wagon axle) with incredible detail and authenticity. The film's unadorned aesthetic yields a morally complex drama and meditation on human nature. Set during the emergence of , it also presents an oblique, cutting comment on America and its policies today.

View the trailer and check local listings for showtimes. In Kansas City, only the Glenwood Arts Theater at 9575 Metcalf is screening it, daily at 1:55, 4:35, and 7:15.

Students Lends Hand in Historical Restoration:

New Fork River Project on Lander Road in Wyoming Now Complete

If you come to the OCTA convention in Rock Springs this summer, you can congratulate and shake the hand of one Clint Gilchrist. Clint involved young people from the Wyoming Conservation Corps (WCC) to help develop and preserve this historic river crossing site. As Clint said, "The project went great. Good group of kids that didn't need alot of supervision. They accomplished everything I hoped for during their session."

Clint added plenty of pictures online as the work progressed, and the Pinedale Roundup covered the story as well.

Clint is now working with Wyoming Landscape Conservation Initiative (WLCI) to see if they will fund another WCC session next May prior to the grand opening of the park to build a gravel walking path. Originally, he had not planned to build a trail, but from the advice he received and from looking at the impact to the ground just from a 10 day work session, he now thinks a gravel trail is needed. Assuming their budget does not get cut, WLCI wants to work with Clint.

If you'd like a sneak preview of the site, Clint will be offering a guided tour of the area on the closing day of the OCTA convention. Be sure to register for the convention now!

From now through the end of June, you can save 15% on any order from OCTA's Save store. You must place your order over the phone and mention this ad to receive the discount. Call us toll free at (888) 811-6282! 15%

Offer Expires: June 30, 2011