Redwood National Park

• Kuchel Visitor Center
• Hiouichi Visitor Center

California National Historic Trail | NHT Interpretive Center, WY

Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail | NHT Interpretive Center, WY

Oregon National Historic Trail | NHT Interpretive Center, WY

El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail | The Stone Fort Museum, TX

Old Spanish National Historic Trail | Canyons of the Ancients VC & Museum

Trail of Tears National Historic Trail |

• New Echota-Cherokee Capital SHS, GA
• Shiloh NMP, TN

All of this month’s stamps represent replacements for existing cancellation locations.

Redwood National Park in northern California is a mix of Federal and State Park land preserving groves of coastal redwoods, including the tallest trees in the world.  The Kuchel Visitor Center is located outside the small town of Orick, California.  It is the primary visitor center for accessing the southern portion of Redwood National Park, which includes the bulk of the federal lands.  The southern portion of Redwood National Park also includes the popular Lady Bird Johnson Trail and the four-mile Tall Trees Trail (free permit required.)  The Hiouichi Visitor Center is located in the northern portion of the Park, which is primarily composed of state park land.  The Hiouichi Visitor Center is located just outside of Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park (Parkasaurus | September 2016).  The northern portion of the park also includes Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, which does not have a visitor center of its own.

The National Historic Trails Interpretive Center opened in Casper, Wyoming in 2002.  It tells the story of the four National Historic Trails that run concurrently through most of Wyoming from the Wyoming-Nebraska border to Fort Bridger in the southwestern corner of the state: the Oregon, California, Mormon Pioneer, and Pony Express National Historic Trails.   I’ve not been able to determine why only three of the four trails covered at the Center received new stamps this month.  The Center does have a cancellation for the Pony Express National Historic Trail, but its a generic stamp listing all states through which the trail passes, and is not place-specific like the others.  Hopefully the National Trails Office will issue a place specific stamp for the Pony Express Trail at the Center in the months ahead.

The Stone Fort Museum can be found on the campus of Stephen F. Austin University.  Originally built sometime around 1790 on the El Camino Real de los Tejas, the Spanish colonial house acquired its nickname after playing a minor role in the Texas Revolution.  The name of the trail translates as “The Royal Road to the Texas”, and commemorates the major Spanish trading route from colonial Mexico through Texas to present-day northwest Louisiana on the Mississippi River. The current structure is actually a replica of the original, built in 1936 for Texas’ Centennial.

The Canyons of the Ancients National Monument was established in 2000 to protect 32 million acres of landscape in southwestern Colorado.  Much of that area is rich in Ancestral Puebloan archeological sites. In fact, three sites in that area had previously been designated as outlying areas of Hovenweep National Monument.  The area also includes the path of the Old Spanish Trail, which once connected Santa Fe and Los Angeles.  The Bureau of Land Management has actually operated the “Anasazi Heritage Center” to tell the stories of these archeological resources since 1988. The Center then became the Visitor Center for the National Monument upon its establishment in 2000.  However, the word Anasazi is actually a Navajo word meaning “ancient enemy.”  Thus, the modern-day Puebloans who are descended from the Ancestral Puebloans, discourage the use of the word Anasazi.  Thus, the new  stamp this month reflects that in April, the Anasazi Heritage Center was renamed as the Canyons of the Ancients Visitor Center and Museum, in respect of the wishes of the modern-day Pueblo Indians.

Pittsburg Landing was an area of relatively flat land on either side of the Tennessee River in southern Tennessee, which made it an important crossing point.  This crossing point was used by southeastern American Indians being forced westward on the Trail of Tears, and by the Union Army heading south during the Civil War.  The Union Army crossed the Tennessee at Pittsburg Landing on their way to the Confederate railroad junction at Corinth, Mississippi.  This led immediately to the battle we now know as Shiloh (or Shiloh Church) as Confederate forces sought unsuccessfully to halt the Union Advance.  On the first day of battle, the Union Army was pushed back to the Tennessee River, where their defence was reinforced by shelling from two Union gunboats in the river.  Nevertheless, after capturing supplies the Union camps during the day, the Confederate generals felt sure that victory would be imminent the next day.  However, during the night Grant’s reinforcements arrived, and around 24,000 troops came across the river at Pittsburg Landing overnight, allowing the Union Army to turn the tide of the battle the next morning.

Interestingly, this battle seems to violate the usual rule-of-thumb that Civil War battles are known by the name used by the side holding the field at the end of the engagement.  The name “Battle of Pittsburg Landing” was commonly used in the north (which typically used the name of water features), but the name “Battle of Shiloh” was commonly used in the north (which typically used the name of towns.)  However, the name “Battle of Shiloh” is the one that stuck in this case.   The new stamp replaces the name of the river crossing used in the Trail of Tears with the name of Shiloh National Military Park, where it is now located.

In 1825, the town of New Echota in northern Georgia was established as the capital of the Cherokee Nation.  It served as the capital, including the Cherokee legislature, executive, and courts until the removal of the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears in 1832.  It was during this time that the Cherokee Sequoyah developed the written Cherokee language, bringing literacy to the Cherokee people – something that was still uncommon even among the Americans of European descent in the area at that time.  The site of the Cherokee capital was reconstructed by the State of Georgia in the 1950’s, and opened to the public as a Georgia State Park in 1962.

 

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