20 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 45, No. 5 Featured Article continued Bickmore created a set of strip maps on white paper approximately 8x36 inches. Each strip map contains approximately 30 miles per map on a township grid system of 1:62,500 (1 inch = 1 mile). Bickmore turned over a copy of his maps to the Oregon State Highway Department. The Oregon State Highway Department produced a series of 10 strip maps at a scale of 1:62,500 with more location information. Those strip maps were reduced in size and detail for publication in a pamphlet for the Oregon Centennial Celebration of 1959. In 1972, Aubrey Haines and his son, C. L. Haines, conducted a field survey of the Oregon Trail for the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation and created a set of maps and a report of significant sites and segments. The report was filed with the National Park Service and formed the map basis for the Congressional designation of the National Historic Oregon Trail in 1978. Haines’s report and a simplified set of maps was published as Mapping the Oregon Trail. According to the introductory material in Mapping: “The Oregon portion of the trail was mapped by personnel of the Oregon Park and Recreation Section of the Oregon State Highway Department. Evidences reported by field engineers were correlated with markers placed in former years, and the partial alignment so obtained was then checked by low- level aerial photography which was able to see traces of the emigrant route otherwise hidden by cultivation and modern use of the land.” The original map drawings by Earl Bickmore remained with him. After Bickmore’s death, the original drawings were passed by Mr. Bickmore’s widow to John W. “Jack” Evans, author of Powerful Rockey, copyrighted in 1980 and published in 1981 by Eastern Oregon State College in La Grande. Mr. Evans used Bickmore’s map Mike Fallert is Senior Surveyor at David Evans & Associates, in their Pocatello, Idaho office. Mike spent 16 years with the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) starting as Junior Surveyor/Inspector in the Astoria Construction office then progressing to Surveyor/Inspector, Crew Chief, Region 2 Project Surveyor, and Lead Right of Way Surveyor over the Right of Way Engineering group. Mike is a graduate of Treasure Valley Community College in Ontario, Oregon and has an Associate of Science Degree in Survey Engineering Technology. Mike’s diverse background includes growing up farming and ranching in Southern Idaho, several positions with private Engineering Firms performing boundary surveying, land development, construction surveying, and construction testing and inspection in both Nevada and Idaho. study as a base to create his own set of USGS maps of the Oregon Trail based on his own observations and research into the old wagon roads of eastern Oregon. In 2003, Evans provided the original Bickmore drawings to Stafford Hazelett to make copies. Hazelett maintains a set of the original Bickmore drawings at full scale in three forms: as continuous strip maps as created by Bickmore, as individual 8x11 sheets on white paper, and on clear acetate. In the summer of 2005, Evans and Hazelett visited the safe storage vault of Eastern Oregon State University (formerly College) and discovered a complete set of the original Oregon State Highway Department strip maps drawn from the original Earl Bickmore strip maps. Hazelett was allowed to make a copy of the original Oregon State Highway Department strip maps which he maintains.
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