| During the summer
of 2002, SOU archeologists conducted an archeological survey of a 2.5
km long section of the Siskiyou Trail, a portion of the
Oregon-California trail that, beginning in the 1820's, linked the
expanding Euro-American population centers the Willamette Valley and
the Sacramento Valley/San Francisco area.
This survey was conducted for the Medford BLM,
and the project area lies on the Cascade-Siskiyou National
Monument. 
Research into historic documents and survey
maps by Richard Silva and Dale Wilson of the Oregon-California Trails
Association mapped the various incarnations of the trail, which has
played a significant role in many threads of the State of Jefferson's
history.
Shasta and Takelma people for millennia likely
used the trail, and Indian people guided Hudson's Bay Company fur
trapper Peter Skene Ogden over the Siskiyou Summit in 1827.
After being used as a fir trader's route, the
trail was 'opened' by Ewing Young in the 1830's when he drove cattle
over the summit from California to provision (in the face of English
interests) the burgeoning American settlements in the Willamette
Valley.
The trail was also used by thousands of white
Oregonians following the discovery of gold in northern California in
1848, and the 'gold rush' in turn spurred the rapid settlement of the
Rogue Valley.
The Siskiyou summit was one arena of conflict
during the Rogue River wars, as Indians and Pioneers fought for
possession of the State of Jefferson.
In the final decades of the 19th century,
development of the trail mirrored the attempts by the victorious
Americans to integrate themselves into a larger, capitalistic,
landscape: the trail was re-engineered and re-plotted as a toll road in
1860; a telegraph line was completed in 1864; and the Southern Pacific
Railroad was completed in 1887.
Maps
More detailed historical research plotted
these various trail incarnations in and around the project area.
According to
old survey records, a segment of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) trail,
the gold rush pack trail, and the earliest emigrant wagon route just
north of the Oregon-California border was abandoned in 1860 with the
completion of the toll road.
Our archeological survey was designed to
verify the
existence of this per-1860. Metal detector  transects
placed on the predicted route of the old
trail, as well as off the trail for control, were used for this
purpose.
The survey resulted in the recovery of 190
metal artifacts including horse, oxen, and mule shoes, draft animal
shoe
nails, wagon parts, and other objects. All artifacts were plotted
using a GPS unite, and form a path that confirms in close detail
to pre-1860 maps of this section of the Oregon-California trail.
View artifacts found during the
survey.
Other Project Pictures
These remains are reasonably identified with
the portion of the trail used by the HBC after 1827, and by the first
gold miners and emigrants to cross between Oregon and California in the
late 1840's and 1850's. The 2.5 km segment of trail constitutes a
historically and culturally significant resource and is eligible for
inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.
The project also demonstrated the value of
cooperation between professional and a vocational archeologists and
historians. Given the significance and integrity of this segment of the
Siskiyou Trail, land managers need to take other segments, as yet
undocumented through archeological survey, into consideration.
In this, professional archeologists have an
ally in the Oregon-California Trails Association, whose background
research
and field efforts have already provided the historic context and
described the routes of emigrant trails throughout the Far West.
Timeline
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