Glenn’s Ferry, Idaho
The Oregon Trail center on the Snake River at a historic site called ‘Three Island Crossing,’ was to create a bridge between the citizens of Glenn’s Ferry, Idaho, and the Shoshone Paiute People of the Duck Valley Reservation. The intention was to deliver an historically accurate version of what really happened when the friendly relations between Oregon Trail settlers and the Shoshone Paiute People living at the crossing, went sour – a story that the tribes deemed overdue.
Jan Coleman worked with Idaho State Parks, Duck Valley representatives, and the project architect to produce architectural, site and exhibit concepts: hiding the visitor center within the sloping site to keep the scenery intact; providing panoramic river views from the visitor center; and capitalizing on sightlines to Oregon Trail ruts across the river. Exhibits of the main gallery were to change character in response to changing relations between settlers and tribes, so that visitors transitioned through Time and emerged in the Present.
An historic site of a Shoshone Paiute encampment, and a vital Snake River-fording site for wagons on the Oregon Trail, the Three Island Crossing story began with friendly and helpful encounters between two cultures that soured over time, as interpreted in the Master Plan Concepts. Courtesy Idaho State Parks.
Site Analysis Diagram for Master Plan Concepts. Courtesy The Portico Group.
Interpretive Experience Diagram for Master Plan Concepts. Courtesy The Portico Group.
“The Land Before Time Began” Site interpretation page from Master Plan Concepts. Courtesy The Portico Group.
Sketch of front half of main gallery illustrates initially-friendly conditions that become fractured and hostile as visitors move through towering ‘time fragments’ and audiovisual segments that separate the past from the present, from Master Plan Concepts. Courtesy The Portico Group.
