Big Hole National Battlefield Administrative History

Chapter Six:
Neighbors And Partners: USDA Forest Service

Big Hole National Battlefield's longstanding relationship with the Forest Service continued into the 1990s. Memoranda of Understanding covering interpretation, vegetation management, fire suppression, and a joint Youth Conservation Corps program were updated. As before, the Park Service offered interpretive programs at the nearby national forest campground in Beaverhead National Forest and the Forest Service provided expert assistance with prescribed burns and other measures to manage the battlefield's vegetation so that it appeared the way it looked in 1877. [127] Cooperative efforts, meanwhile, were extended in two areas: administration of the Nez Perce National Historical Trail and federal wildland fire management policy.

Formally designated on July 19, 1991, the Nez Perce or Nee-Me-Poo National Historical Trail had long been recognized as a cultural and recreational resource. In 1976, Congress amended the National Trails System Act to authorize a joint study of the 1,200-mile route of the Nez Perce flight of 1877 by the Park Service and the Forest Service. The agencies submitted the joint report to the public review process after 1982, and Congress designated the trail in 1986 (P.L. 99-445). The law placed the trail under the administration of the Forest Service – one of the few units in the National Trail System administered by that agency. The Forest Service administered the trail with the help of the private Nez Perce National Historic Trail Foundation, which included a representative of the Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho as well as a member of the Joseph Band on the Colville Reservation in Washington. [128]

Throughout the planning and implementation process, the Forest Service sought advice from the Big Hole staff on issues relating to the trail, particularly in the vicinity of the battlefield. The trail's approach to the battlefield was over present-day Gibbon Pass and down Trail Creek mostly within Beaverhead National Forest although it traversed some private land holdings west of the national battlefield. Five miles west of the national battlefield was the site where Colonel Gibbon's command had camped the night before the battle. Known as the Wagon Train Camp, the site marked where Gibbon had left his supply wagons, stock animals, and mountain howitzer when he advanced under cover of darkness to the edge of the Nez Perce encampment (with orders for the howitzer crew to follow at dawn with the gun and a reserve supply of rifle ammunition). Although little remained of the Wagon Train Camp site as it had been heavily disturbed by dredge mining around the turn of the century, it still held interpretive interest. The trail's continuation east and south of the battlefield, meanwhile, extended mostly through private land. The site of the Nez Perce camp on the night following the dawn attack was thought to be on the Peterson Ranch, approximately 16 miles south of the battlefield. Big Hole National Battlefield staff treated both the wagon train camp and the post-battle Nez Perce camp as related resources outside of the park boundaries. [129] Forest Service officials relied extensively on Park Service expertise for technical assistance with this section of the Nez Perce Trail. [130]

The second area of increased cooperation involved wildland fire management. In the 1990s, Big Hole National Battlefield joined Beaverhead National Forest and other organizations in an expanded effort to pool resources and develop a more comprehensive approach to fire management activities. These included use of prescribed fire and fuels management, suppression of wildfire, interagency coordination of fire policy and program management, and wildland/urban interface protection. [131] In 1994, Big Hole National Battlefield became a party to a new interagency operating plan, or memorandum of agreement, developed by the Dillon Interagency Dispatch Center (DDC). The DDC was established to handle fire and other emergency dispatching for the Beaverhead and Deerlodge national forests and the Dillon Unit of the Department of State Lands. [132]