Trailblazer 8
Hi friends,

Mark your calendars for our Death Valley Gathering to visit the Dantes View Restoration projec t on Tuesday, April 10th at 11:30 am. Please bring family and friends. We'll see the results of transformation of the site and take in the amazing vista from a mile above Badwater and the far reaches of Death Valley. 

                                                                                             Happy Trails! 
                                                                  Bob Hansen
Designing Better Park Experiences
Dan DiVittorio of San Francisco received the Fund’s 2017 Trailblazer award for his work on scores of interpretive projects in a variety of parks over 30 years. In the past three years, he has applied his skills in graphic design, media production, writing and marketing to Fund projects that help make park visits a transformative experience in six different National Parks.
 
His fund projects are at:
  • Pinnacles - wayside exhibits on the east side at the new Bacon Homestead Ranch and on the west side for the new Prewett Point trail. 
  • Death Valley - condensing a lengthy technical solution to the mystery of the Racetrack moving stones into a few sentences and images on a wayside sign. 
  • Oregon Caves - a new trail guide for a part of the park’s eight miles of recently added trails. 
  • Point Reyes - wayside exhibits on the trail along Drakes Estero.
  • Great Basin - an exhibit for the pioneer-era Winchester rifle discovered in the wilderness there.
  • Haleakala National - developing signage so that visitors will be better able to spot and view rare Hawaiian bird species.

Above: Karen Beppler-Dorn, Superintendent of Pinnacles National Monument and Dan DiVittorio
OMG

The Badwater ultramarathon run crosses the 135 miles between Death Valley and Whitney Portal with 14,600 feet cumulative elevation gain and 6,100 feet descent. Only about 75 people complete the race. One or two runners have run double, triple, and even quad crossings!
At this park unit in Washington, visitors discover Fort Vancouver’s history as a British fur trading post, built by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1825. Amazingly, the Hudson’s Bay Company is still a retail group today. It was already 150 years old when it established a de facto government at Fort Vancouver over a huge area known as the Oregon Territory.

Self-guided tours and school programs reveal the people and cultures of the fort. Village cabins illustrate living conditions for the fort’s employees and their families. The Chief Factor’s House highlights the lives of the “gentlemen” in the community. The Fur Warehouse tells stories of the French Canadian, Iroquois, Metis, and Hawaiian brigade men. In the Indian Trade Shop, the focus is on local villagers who came to trade furs and homemade goods for supplies. All these people come alive for students as they learn words in Chinook Jargon, developed from indigenous and global languages to enable trade in the Pacific Northwest.

Visitors also enjoy living history re-enactments, performed by a corps of nearly 700 dedicated volunteers who use a costume wardrobe that covers the centuries, from the fur trade era through to establishment of a barracks in 1849 and beyond. The Fund is adding to the park’s stock of military uniforms in both summer and winter styles to increase the number and scope of its immersive programs. 

Below: Young visitors experience living history at the park's annual Brigade Encampment event.
Fun Facts for People in Parks

Go high : see sunrise at the 10,000 foot summit of Haleakala with no crowds and congestion. An online reservation system now limits the number of vehicles to 150 on any given morning - similar to the system for parking at other parks, including Muir Woods near San Francisco. 

Go low : visit Badwater in Death Valley at 282 feet below sea level . A sign there marks a small spring -fed pool of undrinkable water next to the road. The pool does have animal and plant life , including pickleweed , aquatic insects , and the Badwater snail .

Go back in time: immerse yourself in a former era at Fort Vancouver, with the smell of baking "hardtack" (sea biscuits) at Bake House demonstrations and the boom of 19th century black powder cannons at the Barracks Parade Ground.
Featured Superintendent: Mike Reynolds
Mike Reynolds (above) spoke with Trailblazer editor Bernadette Powell

BP: You’ve now completed four projects with Fund grants. Do you have a favorite?
 
MR: When I got here I found we had 35 new waysides sitting in a warehouse ready to go. It was a problem due to the vast distances in Death Valley and travel required to install them, the maintenance staff being maxed out and everyone involved in the project having moved on to new positions. So, Chief of Interpretation Linda Slater and I told Bob “I really want to get these things in the ground.” And within a year, thanks to the Fund, we had shiny new signs out offering a direct benefit to the public.
 
I’m also very happy about the new museum display case the Fund provided. It allows secure display of rotating exhibits. For example, sometimes people bring objects to the park, and we had a display about closed Scotty’s Castle last year. It’s a project with great bang for the buck.
 
BP: The Dantes View restoration project is next. Why is it urgently needed?
 
MR: It’s one of the five most visited places in the park and inadequate to handle the crowds it is getting. It does not serve park visitors well. It is basically just a parking lot with broken sidewalks and trampled-out trails leading to every little local high point and view. Death Valley has to use all visitor fees for the foreseeable future to fix the 2015 flood damage at Scotty’s Castle. We were only able to use some visitor entrance fees for Dantes View because of the match from the Fund.. When the viewpoint has been re-landscaped, the view will be the centerpiece. And, as a really neat add-on, the Fund provided a bronze relief map of the terrain.
See the new CA Thayer film , created for visitors to San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park through partnership with the SF Maritime Association and the Fund!
Trailblazer editor: Bernadette Powell

The Fund receives its non-profit status by operating as a project of Community Initiatives, a 501(c)3 group based in San Francisco that provides fiscal sponsorship services to nearly 100 selected public benefit organizations. Community Initiatives was established by the SF Foundation in 1996 to be “ In Service to Great Ideas .”

Our mission is to provide private funding and professional services to complete inspirational projects that enhance the visitor experience in western National Parks.