Texas divisionism

Texas divisionism is a mainly historical movement that advocates the division of the U.S. state of Texas into as many as five states, as some considered to be statutorily permitted by a provision included in the resolution admitting the former Republic of Texas into the Union in 1845.
Texas divisionists argue that the division of their state could be desirable because, as the second-largest state in the United States in both area and population, Texas is too large to be governed efficiently as one political unit or that in several states, Texans would gain more power at the federal level, particularly in the U.S. Senate since each state elects two senators, and by extension in the Electoral College in which each state gets two electoral votes for their senators in addition to an electoral vote for each representative. However, others argue that division may be wastefully duplicative by requiring a new state government for each new state.
Federal constitutional process.
 expressly prohibits any other state from dividing up and forming smaller states without congressional approval. The relevant section states "New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress."
The Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States, approved by Congress on March 1, 1845, states:
Proponents of the right of Texas to divide itself to create new states without congressional approval argue that the resolution of 1845, a bill which passed both houses of Congress, stands as congressional "pre-approval" under the terms of the Constitution for formation of such new states. That interpretation of the statute is disputed by opponents.
Opponents argue that there was no such "pre-approval" granted to Texas by Congress within the statute and that the Constitution requires future congressional approval of any new states that are proposed to be formed from what is now the state of Texas. According to opponents, the statute does not grant Texas any congressional "pre-approval" for partition, but the statute simply limits the number of new states that could be carved out of the annexed Texas territory to four.
Opponents also argue that the statute has also been overridden and rendered moot by later legislation that was enacted by Congress, the Act which admitted Texas into the Union as a state. The text of the subsequent Texas Admission Act, signed on 29 December 1845, states that Texas would be admitted to the Union "on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever," which moots any supposed special right for Texas to divide itself up into five states without the future approval of Congress in accordance to Article V, Section 3, of the US Constitution.
Legislative efforts.
The division of the state of Texas was frequently proposed in the early decades of Texan statehood, particularly in the decades immediately prior to and following the American Civil War.
Compromise of 1850 debates.
In the Compromise of 1850 debates, Tennessee Senator John Bell proposed division into two southern states, with the assent of Texas, in February 1850. New Mexico would get all Texas land north of the 34th parallel north, including today's Texas Panhandle, while the area to the south, including the southeastern part of today's New Mexico, would be divided at the Colorado River of Texas into two Southern states, balancing the admission of California and New Mexico as free states.
State of Lincoln.
The State of Lincoln was proposed in 1869, to be carved out of the territory of Texas from the area south and west of the state's Colorado River. Unlike many other Texas division proposals of the Reconstruction period, this one was presented to Congress, but the state legislature did not take final action.
State of Jefferson.
A bill was introduced in the Texas legislature in 1915 to create a State of Jefferson, made up of the Texas Panhandle.
Texlahoma.
In 1935, in response to what proponents felt was lack of state attention to road infrastructure, A. P. Sights proposed that 46 northern Texas counties and 23 western Oklahoma counties secede to form a new, roughly rectangular state called "Texlahoma".
Considerations.
In 2009 Nate Silver wrote that a division could slightly help Republicans in the Senate while slightly hurting them in the Electoral College, concluding that there was not much rationale for either political party to support such a division.


KXOR-LP

KXOR-LP was a low-power television station in Eugene, Oregon, broadcasting locally in analog on UHF channel 36 as an affiliate of Azteca América. Founded June 19, 1995, the station was owned by Churchill Media.
History.
The station began with an original construction permit issued by the FCC to Adolfo Gomez on June 19, 1995. Originally to broadcast on UHF channel 64, the station was given callsign K64EZ. On December 11, 1995, Gomez sold the permit to the Three Angels Broadcasting Network Inc., who completed construction of the station and licensed it on September 15, 1997. The station was granted permission to change to UHF channel 63 on February 11, 1997, and made the change sometime in 1998. Its new callsign was K63GC. In August 1999, the station was granted a displacement application to move to UHF channel 36. It licensed the change on September 16, 2002 with new callsign K36FJ.
On December 30, 2009, KXOR-LP went off the air citing "substantial decreases in its revenue flow" over the past three years. In its application to the FCC for special temporary authority to remain silent, the station's license holder claimed that "losses have reached the point that the station no longer generates sufficient funds to pay operating expenses" and that the company is seeking to either sell the station or refinance and return to operation. The license for KXOR-LP would soon be cancelled, as its signal remained dark for over a year.


Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System

The construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System included over of oil pipeline, 12 pump stations, and a new tanker port. Built largely on permafrost during 1975–77 between Prudhoe Bay and Valdez, Alaska, the $8 billion effort required tens of thousands of people, often working in extreme temperatures and conditions, the invention of specialized construction techniques, and the construction of a new road, the Dalton Highway.
The first section of pipe was laid in 1975 after more than five years of legal and political arguments. Allegations of faulty welds drew intense scrutiny from local and national observers. A culture grew around the unique working conditions involved in constructing the pipeline, and each union that worked on the project had a different function and stereotype. Thirty-two Alyeska Pipeline Service Company employees and contract workers were killed during the project. The main construction effort lasted until 1977; the first barrel of oil was delivered on July 28 of that year. Several more pump stations, added as oil flow increased, were completed through 1980.
Survey and design.
Intensive geological sampling and survey work of the pipeline route started in spring 1970. Aerial photographs were taken, examined, and a preliminary route was detailed. Small survey parties physically visited the route and hammered stakes into the ground. The work was difficult; animal dangers forced the crews to be armed, and they also had to cope with the remote area and limited infrastructure. In places, the foliage was so dense that trees had to be cut down and progress was limited to per day. The surveyed route passed through several mountain passes: Atigun Pass, Isabel Pass, Thompson Pass, and Keystone Canyon. In the latter location, surveyors had to rappel down cliffs in order to perform their work.
Surveyors and planners also had to deal with the Denali Fault, a major cause of earthquakes, and with large amounts of permafrost. In 1969, the unincorporated Trans-Alaska Pipeline System group drilled a series of core samples north of the Brooks Range that demonstrated how ubiquitous the permafrost was along the route. This forced the design of an elevated pipeline, which was tested in a loop built near Barrow. This elevation required the pipeline to be insulated, since extreme cold temperatures caused the metal to become brittle, even when hot oil was being pumped through the pipeline.
After ecological objections forced subterranean pipeline crossings (in order to allow caribou to cross), engineers developed a system by which the ground near the pipeline would be refrigerated by chilled brine. These refrigerated sections also would be placed in Styrofoam-lined trenches and covered with gravel for their insulation value. Altogether, of the pipeline was designed to be built underground in this way. In other places, a lack of permafrost meant it could simply be placed underground without a special refrigeration plant. Large amounts of gravel were needed for all sections of the pipeline as insulation to keep the heat of above-ground structures from melting the permafrost. Gravel also was needed to build the construction and maintenance road, and surveyors located 470 sites across Alaska where the needed of gravel could be located.
The Pipeline Authorization Act required the pipeline to be able to withstand the maximum earthquake ever recorded in the area it was built. When crossing the Denali Fault, Teflon-coated sliders were designed to allow the pipeline to move side-to-side in an earthquake. To protect against forward-and-backward shocks and to allow for thermal expansion, the pipeline wasn't designed as a straight line. Instead, it was intended to be laid in an S-shape, and the bends would allow for expansion and movement without breaking.
Because most of the pipeline was built above permafrost, each of the pipes holding up the raised sections of pipeline contained a sealed tube of ammonia. As the permafrost below the pipeline warms, the ammonia absorbs the heat and rises to a radiator on top of each stanchion. The ammonia is cooled by the outside air, condenses, and falls back to the bottom of the tube, where the process repeats.
The surveyed route crossed hundreds of streams and rivers. To cross these with the pipeline, engineers designed concrete "jackets" to surround the pipe and weight it down so it would sink to the bottom of the stream or river. Because oil is lighter than water, the pipeline would float without the concrete jackets. Dredging rivers and burying the pipeline in the streambed was not allowed due to environmental concerns. In several places—either out of fear of disturbing the river or because of the river's characteristics—pipeline bridges were constructed. The most notable of these are over the Yukon River and the Tanana River. To protect against corrosion in these wet environments, the pipeline was designed with cathodic protection.
In terms of spill prevention, the pipeline was designed with one-way valves (so oil moving ahead could not leak out of a hole behind a certain point), computer-aided leak detection, and other features. The pipeline was designed to be pressurized, so any leak would be instantly detected by a loss of pressure at one of the pump stations, which could sound an alarm and halt the flow of oil quickly.
The original pipeline proposal called for an initial capacity of , then an increase to after two years, and then a further increase to at an indeterminate time thereafter. The events of the 1973 oil crisis caused a review of these plans, and the initial capacity was revised upwards to . This in turn required that eight pumping stations (instead of the originally-planned five) be ready at startup, greatly increasing the construction manpower required.
Valdez Marine Terminal.
The Valdez Marine Terminal, the southern end of the pipeline, was planned for a site across the Port Valdez fjord from Valdez proper. Initial studies predicted bedrock would be six feet below the surface of the ground, but when excavation began, it was discovered that bedrock was actually sixty feet down, requiring the removal of of overburden. The terminal itself was designed to be built with four tanker berths and space for a fifth, should it become necessary. Holding tanks were planned that had a capacity equal to that of the pipeline, allowing the whole pipeline to be emptied if required. As required by the Pipeline Authorization Act, a ballast-water filtration system had to be designed as well. This system removes oil from tankers' ballast water so it is not released into Prince William Sound—something fishermen feared when the pipeline was proposed.
Preparation.
Shortly after the permit was signed, convoys of equipment on snow tractors began heading north, using hardened snow roads and an ice bridge over the Yukon River to reach the seven construction camps that had been dormant since 1970. In the 83 days from mid-January to the time the snow and ice melted in mid-April, 680 workers moved to the seven camps, and built five more camps and five temporary airstrips.
In February, as the ice bridge and snow road were carrying tracked vehicles north, Alyeska awarded a contract to design the construction and maintenance road. Michael Baker, Jr., Inc., a firm in Pennsylvania, was awarded the contract. To cross the Yukon River, the state of Alaska designed a bridge and paid two-thirds of its cost. The remaining third was paid by Alyeska, and the bridge was built by Manson-Osberg-Ghemm. On April 5, the contracts to build the road were picked. In total, the new Dalton Highway cost $185 million to build, and four companies shared that cost. Construction of the Dalton Highway started on April 29, and at the peak of the effort, Alyeska and the four subcontractors had more than 3,400 workers deployed from the Yukon River to Prudhoe Bay. A massive airlift was created to supply the road construction effort; more than 700 flights per day—170,000 in total—were required before the road was finished on September 29. In just 154 days, a 360-mile gravel road had been built. Final grading had to be done and more than 20 small permanent bridges had to be built, but by November, the road was open to traffic crossing the Yukon River on another ice bridge.
Management.
To supervise the construction of the pipeline, Alyeska appointed two construction management contractors to oversee all the other subcontractors in the project. Bechtel Corporation, from San Francisco, was named the management contractor for the pipeline itself. Fluor Alaska Inc., a division of Fluor Corp., was named the management contractor for the pumping stations and Valdez Marine Terminal, which was the most complex single section of the pipeline, since it involved the transfer of oil from the pipeline to seagoing oil tankers.
Neither of those two companies actually did the construction work. That job was handed off to a series of subcontractors, each of whom had responsibility on one (or two) of six sections of the pipeline (seven, if the marine terminal is included). Bidding on the subcontracting jobs opened at the end of March, and the contracts were announced on June 12, 1974.
On Section One, which ran from Valdez to the Sourdough pipeline camp, River Construction Corporation, a division of Morrison-Knudsen, was given the contract. For Section Two, which covered from Sourdough to north of Delta Junction, Perini Arctic Associates, a joint venture of Perini Corporation, Majestic Construction, Wiley Oilfield Hauling Ltd., and McKinney Drilling Company. Section Three covered from Delta Junction, past Fairbanks, and almost to the Yukon. The contract for this section was given to H.C. Price, a group formed by H.C. Price Company (usually known as PPCO), R.B. Potashnick, Codell Construction Company, and Oman Construction Company.
Section Four was from south of the Yukon to Coldfoot. It was contracted to Associated-Green, a group formed by Associated Pipeline Contractors, Inc. and Green Construction Company. The group also was one of the main contractors for construction of the Dalton Highway. Section Five covered the distance from Coldfoot to Toolik pipeline camp, and Section Six went from Toolik to Prudhoe Bay. Together, the two sections covered , and they both were under the supervision of Arctic Constructors, a venture of Brown & Root Inc., Ingram Corporation, Peter Kiewit Sons Inc., Williams Brothers Alaska, Inc., and H.B. Zachry Company.
In Valdez, where Fluor had supervision, the work also was divided among several contractors. Site preparation work was done by Morrison-Knudsen. Chicago Bridge & Iron Company built the tank farms, the tanker berths were built by Kiewest (a venture of Peter Kiewit Sons and Willamette-Western Corporation), and General Electric insulated the pipes. Fluor also had supervision of the construction of the pumping stations, which were generally built by the contractors working on a specific section of the pipeline.
Pipeline camps.
When the contracts were announced, Alyeska already had 12 pipeline construction camps either built or under construction. These camps were all north of the Yukon, however, and camps had to be built along the entire length of the project. Alyeska planned for 29 construction camps, but 31 were created. Seven were built along the pipeline south of the Yukon, and one was built at each of the 12 pump stations along the length of the route.
The camps were built on thick beds of gravel laid down to insulate the underlying permafrost and to prevent pollution. At the conclusion of the construction project, the gravel was removed, theoretically removing oil leaks and other pollution with it. Atop the gravel were prefabricated modular buildings either flown to the site or trucked across the Dalton Highway. The standardized structures could house 28 people, and two typically were bolted together to create two "wings". All were one-story, except at Valdez and at the pump station camps, where modules were laid atop one another because of space concerns. In addition to the gravel insulation, both buildings and utility conduits were raised above the ground to avoid heating permafrost.
The camps housed from 250 people (at each pump station) to 3,500 people (at Valdez). A typical pump station camp cost $6 million to build, while the typical mainline camps cost about $10 million to build. The camps had beds for 16,500 workers and were collectively referred to as "Skinny City" by workers. The name came from the fact that the "city" was long, but only a few hundred feet wide.
Overall construction headquarters was at Fort Wainwright near Fairbanks, where Alyeska leased land and buildings from the U.S. Army. Vacant barracks were converted into housing, and vacant offices were given to oil workers. As air traffic increased, Alyeska arranged for the use of Fort Wainwright's airfield to relieve the burden on Fairbanks International Airport. The camp at Wainwright was the only one that did not use prefabricated buildings.
Workers.
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System was built entirely with unionized labor. Because construction was slumping in the United States at large, the pipeline drew workers from across the country. These workers had to follow a strict hiring process based on union seniority and the labor that was needed. Priority was given to hiring Alaska residents and Alaska Natives, and no strikes were permitted by a labor agreement between Alyeska and the unions. In exchange for abiding by these restrictions, workers were paid extremely well and received fringe benefits. According to the labor contract, every worker was guaranteed 40 hours' pay per week, even if weather made work impossible. In addition, subcontractors had cost-plus contracts with Alyeska for staffing, so there was no incentive to keep staffing levels low. These factors often led to more people being assigned to a job than there was work to do in an attempt to make up time lost to weather delays. At the peak of construction in fall 1975, more than 28,000 people were working on the pipeline. Fourteen to 19 percent of the workers were minorities, and 5 to 10 percent were women. Because of the high turnover on the project, more than 70,000 people worked on at least a part of the pipeline.
Welders.
The welders who worked on the pipeline itself came from Pipeliners Local 798 out of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which specialize in providing welders for large-scale pipeline projects. Members of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing, Pipefitting and Sprinkler Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada performed all welding that was not a part of the pipeline itself, including pump stations, feeder pipelines, and work at the Valdez Marine Terminal. The welders were the highest paid of all the workers on the pipeline, with a normal rate of $18.25 per hour. To be hired on the pipeline project, welders had to go through an intensive certification process that involved a series of test welds. If a welder failed any of the test welds, he was not hired and was not allowed to try again for several weeks.
Most 798ers were characterized by a Southern accent, cowboy boots, and unique welder's hats. They were the only people to weld the pipe of the main pipeline, and outside observers characterized them as arrogant and "redneck". An example of their attitude was how they dealt with the situation regarding lunch, in late 1975. Alyeska had said they would provide hot lunches wherever possible, and in reality this ended up being whoever was working closest to the camps, while those working further away carried bagged lunches to their worksite. After complaints of how this was unfair (since certain unions were far more favored than others by this policy), Alyeska decided that no one would get hot lunches. But then the welders from 798 starting cooking their own lunches (against camp rules) using steaks taken from the kitchen freezers on makeshift grills whose burners were their acetylene torches. As a fellow welder stated at the time, "Take your typical 798 pipeline welder and feed him a few drinks, and he'll probably tell you that he's God's greatest gift to welding." This attitude generated resentment from other pipeline workers, and the conflict caused large-scale brawls. In some instances, Alaska State Troopers had to be flown to pipeline camps in order to break up small riots. Toward the end of the pipeline project, a series of bumper stickers was produced with the slogan "Happiness is 10,000 Okies going south with a Texan under each arm."
Teamsters.
The Teamsters Union was by far the largest and most notable contributor of workers to the pipeline project. Teamsters worked in the transportation and supply aspects of the project. All trucks were driven by Teamsters, supply warehouses were run by Teamsters, and the buses that transported workers from camps to job sites were run by Teamsters. Teamsters Local 959, with more than 23,000 employees at its peak, was by far the most dominant labor force on the pipeline project. There were frequent allegations of corruption by Teamsters on the project, and the "Anchorage Daily News" won a Pulitzer Prize for a 15-part series on the rise of Local 959 and its influence on state politics. Repeated allegations of links to organized crime were never backed up by evidence, but two Teamsters leaders were murdered in 1976 while investigating drug activity on the pipeline project. Teamsters workers strongly denied any involvement with organized crime, and pointed to the fact that 80 percent of the Teamsters in the project had college degrees or professional and management experience.
The Teamsters' control of tools and equipment in warehouses they ran led to conflicts with other workers. In a few instances, Teamsters were assaulted by workers from other unions. In other instances, the Teamsters used their position to extract concessions from Alyeska and the subcontractors. Although they were forbidden from striking, they were allowed to halt work for safety meetings, and this excuse was used on a handful of occasions. The most notable of these was in February 1975, after a series of serious truck accidents on the Elliott Highway, which connected to the newly built Dalton. The Elliott, which had not been upgraded, was a treacherous drive for trucks hauling of pipe. After his attempts to get Alyeska to upgrade the road were rebuffed, Teamster leader Jesse Carr stopped all truck traffic in the state for four days of safety meetings. Alyeska and the state promised upgrades to the road, and the traffic resumed.
Operators.
The International Union of Operating Engineers (called Operators for short) represented the men and women who sat at the controls of the heavy equipment used on the construction of the pipeline. This equipment included bulldozers, cranes, drilling rigs, and sidebooms—a cross between a bulldozer and a crane that could lay a section of pipe in a trench parallel to its tracks. Because most of the heavy equipment was unheated, six operators were typically assigned to each piece of equipment, allowing for frequent breaks. A popular joke on the pipeline was that the sole qualification to be an Operator was, "Must be able to sit on a sideboom at 40 below and not freeze up." More seriously, one laborer wrote, was that there was nothing more terrifying than to be in a trench and have a drunken or unskilled Operator handling the pipe that was being laid in the trench.
Laborers.
The Laborers International Union represented the bulk of the less-skilled labor on the project. Laborers, as they were commonly known, did most of the odd jobs on the project: digging trenches in areas inaccessible by heavy equipment, drilling holes for the pipeline's Vertical Support Members, spreading gravel, crushing rock, and moving supplies by hand. Laborers Local 942 out of Fairbanks was the most prominent Laborers group on the project, and because no special skills were required for the jobs it filled, the Laborers Union attracted most of the people who came to Alaska specifically for the pipeline project. As one Laborer put it, they were people "simply looking for the easiest way possible of getting through the day."
Because the Laborers had more applicants than jobs available, the process for getting a job on the pipeline through Laborers Local 942 was a multi-tiered process. There were multiple levels of eligibility, based on the amount of seniority a person had. A-level members had the first pick of jobs, but they had to have worked at least 800 hours with the union in the previous year. B-level members had to have worked between 100 and 800 hours with the union. C-level members had to have at least two years of experience outside of Alaska or be an Alaska resident for at least one year. D-level was for everyone else, and D-level people rarely got jobs. That didn't stop people from trying. At 11 a.m. on January 1, 1974, shortly before the pipeline right-of-way was signed, more than 100 people spent the night outside the Fairbanks office of the Laborers Union, waiting for the first choice of jobs when the office opened.
Pipeline life.
Life during the pipeline construction project was characterized by long hours, poor conditions, and limited entertainment compensated by excellent benefits and pay. Each worker was handed a small booklet of 23 camp rules, but the rules (including no alcohol or smoking) were frequently broken and became the target of ribald humor.
Within the living quarters, the atmosphere resembled that of a college dormitory. Housekeeping and laundry services were provided, but the quarters were small and little entertainment was available. Television broadcasts were delayed two days because of the need to fly tapes from California, and most workers had to develop their own forms of entertainment. In the winter, some took to skiing or sightseeing; in the summer, some went hiking. In general, however, little time was available for recreation because of the long hours worked by most people.
In the first years of the project, workers were regularly treated to prime rib, steak dinners, and other exotic fare due to a cost-plus contract between the food preparers and the subcontractors. In later years, these cost-plus contracts were replaced, and institutional cooking and box lunches became common, but the food on the project was still prized by many workers. As soon as the haul road, later named the Dalton Highway, was built, the food and the overtime for some unions changed. The highway construction was charged to the federal and state governments and was supposed to be cost plus. There were no more steak nights one to two times a week and the Australian rock lobster tails disappeared. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) LU 1547 was one union that had overtime on Sundays changed from double time to time-and-one-half upon completion of the haul road.
In 1976, workers' pay averaged between $11 and $18 per hour, depending on the position. With workweeks averaging between 70 and 84 hours per week, the problem for many workers became what to do with so much extra money. Teamster Jerry Thornhill, a typical worker, wrote to "Money" magazine, asking for advice. Thornhill detailed a pay rate of $57,000 per year at a time when members of Congress earned $42,500 annually, professional football players averaged $40,000, and U.S. vice president Nelson Rockefeller earned $62,500. The large amounts of money in the pipeline camps and a lack of entertainment caused frequent gambling games that sometimes involved tens of thousands of dollars. Instead of gambling, other workers saved their money for monthlong vacations to Hawaii or other warm climates, then returned to work with no money remaining.
Laying pipe.
The first section of the Trans-Alaska pipeline was laid on March 27, 1975, in the Tonsina River. Several forty-foot sections of pipe were welded together and coated in concrete prior to the ceremony. Twelve sidebooms (bulldozers with side-mounted cranes) together lifted of pipe, which was laid in a trench dug perpendicular to the riverbed. Bulldozers filled in the exposed trench with gravel, restoring the river's original contours. This process was repeated a few miles south, where the pipeline crossed the Little Tonsina River. By the end of April, the first of elevated pipeline also was built in the same area.
In 1975, the first year of pipelaying, Alyeska set a goal of completing 45 percent of the 800-mile route. This would not be laid in a straight line, since it was expected that river crossings would take longer to complete than portions of the pipeline on dry land. Work on the pumping stations and the Valdez Marine Terminal, which had begun in the fall of 1974, also was expected to take longer than laying pipe. Conversely, work on those two projects could proceed during the winter, when pipelaying could not take place due to the frozen ground.
Laying pipe took several stages. First, the right of way had to be cleared with chainsaws, bulldozers, and scrapers who followed the rough route laid out by the initial surveyors. These crews were followed by another group of surveyors and engineers who determined whether the pipeline could be laid in the planned spot, or if it had to be moved because of permafrost, soft ground, or other considerations. State and federal surveillance officers, working with the engineers, could give the OK to move the path of the pipeline as much as 200 feet to the right or left in order to avoid obstacles.
After the path was finalized came the augers and drillers for the holes that served as foundations for the Vertical Support Members that held up the pipe. These holes were drilled and filled with a mix of water, gravel and dirt before a VSM was dropped into each hole. Because of the frozen ground, the gravel and dirt froze as hard as concrete, sealing the VSMs in place. The VSMs were laid in parallel, two at a time, and each had a semicircular rest for the pipeline segments. These were carried in 40-foot or 80-foot segments by crane or sideboom to the appropriate location, lowered into place, then welded together. The welds were then inspected via X-ray by quality control engineers who followed the welders.
The construction progressed under the management of Frank Moolin, Jr., an engineer who had worked on refinery projects in Singapore and the construction of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system prior to being named senior project manager. Moolin became known for his work ethic and his hard-driving style. It was said that he was the first person in the office and the last to leave at the end of the day. The "Engineering News-Record" reported "He demands total dedication, saying, 'Your wife had a baby; so what?'" when it named him the construction industry's Man of the Year in 1976. To spur progress on the pipeline, he started the "Alyeska Sweepstakes," in which each of the five contractors working on the pipeline were compared to each other based on how much of their share they completed on time. In his biggest decision, he canceled Bechtel's contract as management contractor because he felt the company was adding too much bureaucracy between Alyeska and the pipeline contractors. A historian later called the decision "one of the most humiliating defeats" in the history of Bechtel.
In October, snow and cold weather brought most of the pipeline laying to a halt for the year. Employment rose from 12,000 workers in the spring to more than 21,000 in the summer and down to 7,000 at Christmas. Alyeska estimated that the pipeline laying was about 50 percent complete: of pipeline were welded and in place. But work on the pump stations and in Valdez lagged; the project as a whole was only 35 percent complete when the pumps were factored in.
Speeding up construction.
During the winter of 1975–1976, Moolin pronounced himself dissatisfied with progress, but promised improvements. "We've learned an awful lot. This year (1975) was a pull-ourselves-up-by-our-bootstraps operation. We didn't really have our organization set until July, and it wasn't working at top effectiveness until October." To take advantage of that "top effectiveness", Moolin set an ambitious goal for 1976 construction: "We're expecting to have all of the line installed, insulated, and hydro-tested by November 1," he said in January. That goal was ambitious, because most of the work that had been done to that point was on floodplains and flat terrain. Still left to tackle were difficult construction projects in Atigun Pass and Keystone Canyon. "In some areas, we did eat our cake last year," Moolin said.
Even though winter shut down all pipelaying on the right of way, work on the pump stations and in Valdez continued without stop. At Pump Station 1, in Prudhoe Bay, temperatures reached lower than , but the work continued. Because the pump station was the origin point for the main pipeline, it also had to process the feeder lines coming from oil wells. The pump station camp had a population of 270 workers through the winter, and it would peak in the summer with 430 workers.
Welding controversy.
As the weather warmed and work resumed on the main pipeline, Alyeska administrators were occupied by a controversy about pipeline welds that had been done the previous year. In September 1975, a former employee of Ketchbaw Industries filed suit against the company, alleging that he had been laid off because he would not participate in a conspiracy to falsify quality control X-rays of pipeline welds. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline was unique among pipeline projects to that point in that it required all welds of the main pipeline to be verified by X-ray. This was a time-consuming process, and the quality-control procedures continually lagged behind the welders.
At the end of 1975, Alyeska terminated Ketchbaw's contract and took responsibility for analyzing weld X-rays itself. The controversy continued, however, as Kelley's lawsuit moved forward, a Ketchbaw manager was found dead of cyanide poisoning, and photographs of welds were stolen from a pump station construction camp. Alyeska began a review of all 30,800 welds that had been done in 1975, and submitted its report to the Interior Department in April 1976. In May, it submitted its technical analysis and a report on repair work under way. The review produced a list of 3,955 questionable welds—10 percent of 1975's work.
Alyeska reported that about half were too minor to affect the running of the pipeline, but questions lay with more than a thousand welds that might be dangerous. Re-examining the welds would be extremely difficult, since those sections of pipeline were sealed (and in many cases buried). By July, the U.S. Congress began holding hearings into the welding problems. President Gerald Ford sent a team to Alaska to oversee and examine Alyeska's work. At the recommendations of this team and to avoid further investigations, Alyeska began repairing the welds on its own. By September, more than 3,000 of the questionable welds had been redone or certified as safe. Alyeska asked for waivers on the remaining 612 welds, and more hearings resulted. By the end of November, only 34 welds were still at issue. The leader of Ford's team ordered 31 of the welds to be dug up and re-done. Waivers were granted for the other three welds only, all of which were buried under the Koyukuk River south of the Brooks Range. Proof of the integrity of those three questionable yet inaccessible welds were evaluated by a unique solution in Section Five north of the Brooks Range. On either side of the Sagavanirktok River, the above ground pipeline was cut and 48 inch fans installed to circulate air. Then a team of 12 men and inspectors riding on wheeled sleds pulled by a modified John Deere lawnmower entered the pipe. Welds were counted during the passage. After arriving at the questionable weld under the Sagavanirktok River, an ultrasound was taken on the inside of the pipe. Then the team exited the pipe on the opposite side and the ultrasound was taken back to camp for evaluation. Alyeska estimated the total cost of redoing the welds to be $55 million.
Atigun, Keystone, and Sag River.
Many of the suspected faulty welds were in Section Five of the pipeline construction project—the northernmost . This area also included two of the major problems encountered during the 1976 construction season: Atigun Pass and the Sagavanirktok River (also known as Sag River). The pipeline had been laid in a trench beneath the river in the late fall of 1975. Because it had been laid so late in the season, the trench fill material had frozen and it was impossible to fill the submerged trench containing the pipeline. Spring snowmelt flooded the river and battered the submerged portion of pipe. In June, the battered pipeline broke free of its moorings and a 1,700-foot (518 m) section of concrete-coated pipe floated to the surface of the river. Because doing repair work would interfere with the migration of Arctic char, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game allowed only 24 hours for the project. After preparing the site, it took just four hours for a replacement trench to be dug, a pipe welded and laid in the trench, and the trench to be filled in.
At Atigun Pass, to the south of the Sag River, workers had to deal with a different set of challenges. In 1975, surveyors discovered the pass was filled with permafrost and glacial soils. But because the pass is the site of frequent avalanches, an elevated pipeline was not possible. The solution was to design a reinforced, insulated ditch to lay the pipeline in. The result was a 6,000-foot (1.83 km) long concrete box lined with of Styrofoam. The problem then became one of building it before the first snow started falling in October.
At the opposite end of the pipeline, just north of Valdez, engineers coped with the difficulties posed by Keystone Canyon. The canyon was the only route to Valdez, but it was occupied by the Richardson Highway and the Lowe River; no room was available for the pipeline. The only solution was to avoid the canyon by building the pipeline through the Chugach Mountains and at the rim of the canyon. Winter work was made impossible by the more than of snow that fell in the winter of 1975-1976, and when the snow melted, construction workers had to figure out how to travel up a 60 percent grade, then lay the pipeline on it. A rock-crushing plant was built at the canyon's rim to avoid the need to carry gravel up the steep grade, but problems still persisted. Not even bulldozers could traverse the grade without a team of two helping each up the grade in turn. A bulldozer had to be modified to carry 80-foot (20.4-meter) sections of pipe up the grade, but even then, most of the sections and equipment had to be lifted by helicopter to the canyon rim. Similar techniques had to be used at nearby Thomson Pass, and both sections required the entire 1976 construction season to complete.
Pump stations and marine terminal.
Work at the pump stations and marine terminal, which had not stopped during the winter, continued throughout the 1976 construction season. Pump Station 6, just south of the Yukon River, had to be redesigned after excavation revealed permafrost below the site. Five pump stations needed at startup (when throughput was lower) received their pumps, turbines, and piping. As they were completed, the pump stations received hydrostatic testing, in which portions of pipe were filled with water and subjected to pressures in excess of the eventual operating conditions. Following this testing, the initial five pump stations were disconnected from the main pipeline and had oil run through them on a continuous loop. "It's very similar to your new automobile," one worker said. "You drive it around for ten days so that any components that are going to fail are given time to fail." Work on additional pump stations, which would not be needed until the pipeline was brought to full capacity, was not pressed forward.
At Valdez, construction was two-thirds complete by September as 4,200 workers hurried to complete the marine terminal. Because of loose soil found at the job site, enormous retaining walls had to be constructed to secure the ground below some of the 58 structures that were completed by the end of the year. During the first week of November, the first ship docked at the newly built Valdez quays. It was not a tanker but a ship bringing more construction material. In December, the first signal was sent from the Valdez operations center—where two new control computers had been installed—to Pump Station 2 on the North Slope.
Although the project made strides toward completion in 1976, it did not meet Moolin's goal of having all pipe installed, insulated, and tested by winter. The final section of main pipeline was welded in place on December 6, but not all of the pipeline was tested before winter set in. At the end of 1976, the project was 92 percent complete. The pipeline was 97.5 percent complete, the pump stations were 92 percent done, and the marine terminal stood at 83 percent. Because the terminal was the lagging portion of the project, its full work crew continued operations through the winter and into 1977.
Finishing the line.
Few tasks were left to complete when the 1977 construction season began. Most of the pump stations had been turned over to operating personnel by construction workers, and environmental mitigation and cleanup was in full swing as Alyeska repaired tundra damage caused by construction. Associated-Green, which had performed its construction tasks well, was assigned the job of finishing the final touches on the main pipeline. The last 160 miles of hydrostatic testing were done, 33 remedial welds were completed, and 45 miles of pipe were insulated, among other tasks. Because the pace of construction was much slower than in 1976, fewer workers were needed. Fewer than 11,000 were employed at the peak of 1977 work, about half of 1976's total. On May 31, the final pipeline weld took place.
Additional tasks remained still to be completed, but the pipeline could be put into operation without them. The E. L. Patton Yukon River Bridge was not completed until October 1979; until then, traffic utilized a series of ferries across the river. Additional pump stations also were constructed between 1977 and 1980, as oil flow increased.
Camp cleanup.
As part of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, Alyeska was required to remove most traces of the 31 pipeline construction camps. Seven camps closed in November 1976, and six more closed before the 1977 construction season started. All told, 20 camps went up for sale. One was sold to the University of Alaska for use as an Arctic research facility, while another was converted for use as a truck stop and motel.
In addition to removing its camps, Alyeska also had to dispose of the heavy equipment used to build the pipeline. In January 1977, Alyeska listed more than 20,000 pieces of equipment for sale. "The New York Times" called the auction of surplus equipment "one of the biggest going-out-of-business sales in history."
Turning on TAPS.
In April 1977, Alyeska filed a notice that it intended to start filling the pipeline sometime between June 20 and July 1. Engineers had to face several problems when filling the pipeline. First was the need to balance temperatures: Filled by air, the steel pipeline was about degrees. The oil emerging from wells at Prudhoe Bay was more than degrees, and there was a danger that if it was introduced before intermediate warming, the pipeline could crack because of thermal expansion. The second problem came when the pipeline needed to be purged of air in order to reduce the danger of fire or explosion. Usually, a pipeline is filled with water first, and the oil pushes the water ahead of it, purging the pipeline as it goes. In Alaska, there was a fear that the water would freeze in the pipeline, damaging it. This problem was solved when pressurized nitrogen was used instead of water.
On June 20, 1977, the first section of pipeline was pressurized with nitrogen, and oil was introduced behind it. Because of the cold temperature of the pipeline and the slow rate at which oil was introduced, it took 31 days for the first oil to travel from Prudhoe to Valdez. "As oil cools down, it becomes thicker," explained one worker. "Our oil at first had a viscosity very similar to asphalt. Another problem was faced when the oil traveled downslope from Atigun Pass. To avoid a situation where the oil front could gain momentum from the downhill slope and rapidly crash into a pipeline section or pump and damage it, regulator valves were used to slow the rate at which the nitrogen ahead of the oil could move. This procedure was used at the other downhill slopes at startup.
As the oil advanced through the pipeline, it was paced by a series of inspectors who traveled along the pipeline route to ensure the weight of the oil did not cause the pipeline to settle or create problems on bridges as the unbalanced weight of the oil front passed over them. This first inspection crew was followed by a second, and others patrolled the pipeline regularly as the oil front passed down the line. The first oil arrived in Valdez on July 28, 1977, at 11:02 p.m. The oil was only , but it gradually warmed as the system reached a thermal equilibrium. After the initial startup, the pipeline was intended to run continuously. Said an engineer: "We start up this pipeline once ... It will stay onstream then forever ... 'forever' being the life of the oil field."
The startup was not without incident. On July 4, a nitrogen leak was detected at milepost 489.2. The flow of oil stopped for three days as workers repaired a pipe elbow that cracked because of the temperature difference between the pipe and the supercooled nitrogen. On July 8, oil flowed through a shut-off pump at Pump Station 8 as workers replaced a strainer. The resulting spray mixed with ambient air and was ignited by a stray spark. One worker was killed and five others were injured in the resulting explosion, which also shut down the station until March 1978. On July 19, a heavy equipment accident caused a pipeline break that leaked of oil.
The startup process and construction as a whole came to an end on August 1, 1977 when the tanker "ARCO Juneau" sailed out of Valdez with the first load of oil from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.
Cost.
When the TAPS group initially proposed the pipeline in 1969, the proposed cost was $900 million, and the pipeline would be completed by 1972. By January 1970, the projected cost had risen from $900 million to $2 billion. In October 1973, Alyeska further refined its figures and anticipated a cost of between $3.1 billion and $3.5 billion, with the potential for a billion more. One year later, Alyeska released its most detailed cost estimate to that point: $5.982 billion. By June 1975, that figure had again risen to $6.4 billion. At the time, it was estimated that $3 billion of the cost rise to that point was due to inflation, while another $2 billion was due to environmental costs. In July 1976, amid the second year of construction, the project's cost was raised to $7.7 billion. The increase, Alyeska reported, was due to material and freight costs, repairs needed to poorly built sections of pipeline, and contingency estimates.
The final construction cost was tallied at $8 billion, but this figure does not include interest on investment loans or the cost of improvements and repairs after 1977. The Valdez Marine Terminal alone cost $1.4 billion. The percentage of the pipeline owned by various companies has changed over time, but as of 2009, the primary owner was BP, which controls 46.93 percent of the pipeline. Second is ConocoPhillips Transportation Alaska Inc. with 28.29 percent, followed in order by ExxonMobil (20.34 percent), Koch Alaska Pipeline Company (3.08 percent), and Unocal Pipeline Company (1.36 percent).
The pipeline also has had a human toll. Thirty-two Alyeska or contract workers were killed during the construction project. That figure does not include common carrier fatalities. Since the pipeline began operating in 1977, 10 people have been killed while working for Alyeska or one of its contractors.
References.
http://www.alyeska-pipe.com/assets/uploads/pagestructure/TAPS_PipelineFacts/editor_uploads/Factbook09_6.30.pdf


Hopeton Earthworks

The Hopeton Earthworks are an Ohio Hopewell culture archaeological site consisting of mounds and earthwork enclosures. It is located on the eastern bank of the Scioto River just north of Chillicothe in Ross County, Ohio, about a mile east of the Mound City Group and Shriver Circle on a terrace of the Scioto River. The site is a detached portion of the Hopewell Culture National Historic Park, along with the Mound City Group, Hopewell Mound Group, Seip Earthworks, Spruce Hill Earthworks and the High Bank Works. The site is open to the public.
Survey history.
Squier and Davis: 1846.
Ephraim George Squier and Edwin Hamilton Davis visited the site in 1846. They would discuss their findings from surveying Hopeton in their 1848 book, "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley". They describe the site as consisting of main works with a set of smaller works to the right of the main. There is a rectangle shaped work "with an attached circle, the latter extending into the former, instead of being connected with it in the usual manner." The circle is located "somewhat to the right of a line drawn through the centre of the rectangle, parallel to its longest sides." The rectangle site was surveyed at by in size. The attached circle was noted at in diameter.
The site was reported as having 12 gateways, averaging in width. The "line" going from the circle to the rectangle was long. The east side of the earthworks were reported as having two more circles. One was measured at and the other at in diameter. Another small circle is located just north of the site, also noted at in diameter.
The walls are loam. They were reported as being high and at the base. Unlike many other earthworks, there is no ditch on either side of the walls. Squier and Davis were impressed by the size of the walls, stating that "they resemble the heavy grading of a railway, and are broad enough, on the top, to admit the passage of a coach." The circle walls are shorter than the rectangle walls, and Squier and Davis believed this to be due to farming. They noted that the clay used to build the circle was different colors than the earth the earthworks were built upon.
Squier and Davis surveyed that parallel walls traveled from the northwestern corner of the rectangle to the river it the southwest. They did not believe that these walls were directly connected to the main works of the site. They walls were marked as being long and apart. They end at "the edge of the terrace," where the "river once had its course." Both are described as being straight in design. They noted that excavations throughout the area, one is a large hole, others were random removals of soil, but not enough removed to have created the earthworks. No large mounds were found at the time of excavation, but two small oval shaped elevations were discovered. There were also two small mounds in the rectangle.
After their survey, Squier and Davis concluded that the site was used as a fortification.


Treaty of Fond du Lac

The Treaty of Fond du Lac may refer to either of two treaties made and signed in Duluth, Minnesota between the United States and the Ojibwe (Chippewa) Native American peoples.
1826 Treaty of Fond du Lac.
The first treaty of Fond du Lac was signed by Lewis Cass and Thomas L. McKenney for the United States and representatives of the Ojibwe of Lake Superior and the Mississippi on August 5, 1826, proclaimed on February 7, 1827, and codified in the United States Statutes at Large as . The Ojibwe chiefs who were not in attendance to the First Treaty of Prairie du Chien agreed to its adhesion. The Ojibwe Nations granted to the United States the rights to minerals exploration and mining within Ojibwe lands located north of the Prairie du Chien Line. Provisions were also made for the Ojibwe living about Saint Mary's River. As addenda to this treaty, arrest warrants to certain individuals living outside the jurisdiction of the United States were issued and land grants to the Métis were made.
1847 Treaty of Fond du Lac.
The second treaty of Fond du Lac was signed by Issac A. Verplank and Henry Mower Rice for the United States and representatives of the Ojibwe of Lake Superior and the Mississippi on August 2, 1847, proclaimed on April 7, 1848, and codified as . This treaty ceded lands in a triangular area west of the Mississippi River, bounded by the Prairie du Chien Line, Mississippi River, Crow Wing River and Long Prairie River.
According to the oral histories of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, representatives from the Ho-Chunk Nation negotiated with the Lake Superior and Mississippi Chippewas before treaty discussions with the United States took place to guarantee the safety of the Ho-Chunk Nation which was about to be displaced from the Neutral Ground with the admission of much of Iowa Territory into the Union as the State of Iowa, in their Treaty of Washington (1846). The Ho-Chunk were supposed to be removed to the land ceded by the two 1847 Ojibwe treaties along the Long Prairie River (now in Minnesota). Many refused. Some fled to Wisconsin and some to Nebraska. The balance were removed to Minnesota in 1848 and a second removal occurred in 1850 which brought in another portion of the Ho-Chunk to the area. Due to frequent skirmishes by Ojibwe and Dakota bands against one another the Ho-Chunk could not avoid being attacked at times. The Ho-Chunk were unhappy with the land and were eventually relocated to an area near the Blue Earth River in southern Minnesota in 1855. After the Dakota rose up against whites in 1862 and the U.S.-Dakota war caused depopulation of southern Minnesota, many remaining Minnesota citizens were in no mood to allow the Ho-Chunk Nation to remain in the state, despite their neutrality during the hostilities. The Winnebago subsequently ceded their Minnesota lands to the United States per Treaty of Washington (1865) for relocation to South Dakota and then Nebraska. Meanwhile, the Ojibwe land ceded in 1847 remained in U.S. government hands and was eventually opened up to white settlement.
Signatories.
The signatory headmen were the following:
Treaty adhesion:
Treaty adhesion approval:


Bear Springs Treaty

The Bear Spring (Ojo del Oso) Treaty was signed on November 21, 1846 between Chief Narbona and 13 other Navajo leaders and Colonel Alexander Doniphan representing the US Government at Bear Springs, New Mexico in the Navajo country, near the future site of Fort Wingate. It was the first of many treaties signed between the Navajo and the US Government. It was never ratified by the U.S. Senate.
Background.
The traditional Navajo homeland spans from Arizona through western New Mexico, where the Navajo had houses and raised livestock. There was a long historical pattern in the Southwest of groups or bands raiding and trading with each other. This included Navajo, Spanish, Mexican, Apache, Comanche, Ute, and the "new men" (Anglo-Americans), as Chief Narbona called them in 1846. Events before 1863, included a cycle of treaties, raids and counter-raids by the US Army, the Navajo and a civilian militia, with civilian speculators often on the fringe. Most of the militia involved were longtime enemies of the Navajo, like Spanish descendants from northern New Mexico, where Spain had established several settlements beginning in the late 16th century during the New Mexico's Colonial period.
Events just before the treaty, September–October 1846.
The Navajo continue to raid despite the arrival of the US Military in 1846. General Stephen W. Kearny ordered the Navajo to attend a council in Santa Fe in September 1846. The Navajo did not show up. On October 2, Kearny sent a note to Col. William Doniphan, his second-in-command in Santa Fe to take all prisoners held by the Navajo and property which may have been stole from the inhabitants" of New Mexico. On October 5 while on his way to California Kearny stopped in Socorro, New Mexico. He wrote a proclamation there that authorized "all the inhabitants (Mexican & Pueblos) ...to form war parties, march into the country of their enemies, the Navajoes, to recover their property, to make reprisals and obtain redress for the many insults received from them. The old, the women and the children of the Navajoes must not be injured." In late October, Kearny ordered Doniphan to send a regiment of soldiers into Navajo country and secure a peace treaty with them.
A detachment of 30 men made contact with the Navajo and spoke to the Navajo Chief Narbona in mid-October.
Treaty, November 21, 1846.
A second meeting between Chief Narbona with five hundred Navajo and Col. Doniphan occurred on November 21 at Bear Spring, Ojo del Oso, near where Fort Wingate would later be built. Doniphan informed the Navajo that all their land now belonged to the United States, and the Navajo and New Mexicans were the "children of the United States". The Navajo signed a treaty, known as the Bear Spring Treaty, on November 21, 1846. Given that the Navajos could not read or write, it is unlikely that they completely understood the Treaty they had signed.
The "Memorandum of a treaty entered into between Colonel A. W. Doniphan, commanding the United States' forces in the Navajo country, and the chiefs of the Navajo Nation of Indians", declared in Article I: "A firm and lasting peace and amity shall henceforth exist between the American people and the Navajo tribe of Indians"
Article 2 noted the definition included New Mexicans and Pueblo peoples as being Americans, that Article 3 said free trade was guaranteed by both sides, with protection of any molestation and Articles 4 & 5 said the prisoners and property taken by both sides were to be restored.
Aftermath.
After the treaty was signed, gifts were exchanged as an expression of good will, according to John Hughes from 1847.
The treaty did little to end the conflict between the Navajo, the New Mexicans and recently arrived Anglos. The Navajo warriors continued to raid the New Mexicans and take their livestock. Likewise, New Mexican militia continued to raid the Navajo for livestock and slaves.
Further treaties would be signed and military actions taken, resulting in the Long Walk of the Navajo in 1863, and their return in 1868.


Rock House Reservation

The Rock House Reservation is a open space preserve located in West Brookfield, Massachusetts. The property, acquired in 1993 by the land conservation non-profit organization The Trustees of Reservations, is named for a natural rock shelter once used as a winter camp by Native Americans. Its location near two, long Native American footpaths suggests that it may also have been a trail camp and meeting place.
The Rock House Reservation is located off Massachusetts Route 9 and offers of hiking trails, an interpretive center, a butterfly garden, and scenic vistas. Boulder strewn Carter Pond occupies the center of the property. The reservation is open to hiking, picnicking, and cross country skiing. Horseback riding and mountain biking are allowed on certain parts of the property.
History.
During the last ice age when the southern movement of the Wisconsin Glacier transformed the landscape producing unique rock formations and outcroppings. Today two glacially formed outcroppings are still present on the property. These formations are known as Balance Rock and the Rock House Shelter. After the ice age, archaeologists believe Native Americans used the Rock House Shelter as a winter camp, trail camp and/or meeting place.
In the mid 17th century, the forests of West Brookfield were cleared by colonists for farming. In 1866, pastures around the Rock House were added to a 281-acre farm on Ragged Hill Road owned by William Adams whose family would tend the land for more than 125 years. During the first two decades of the 20th Century, Rock House was a popular stop on the "Copper Line", an electric trolley that ran between West Brookfield and Ware.
Visitors came to picnic in the abandoned pastures and explore this historic Native American landmark. Later the area was used as a country retreat by Arthur Carter, a family descendant of the Adams who owned the land since the mid-1800s. Arthur built a small cabin in 1930, today’s Trailside Museum, and created Carter Pond by building an earthen dam. The property was gifted to The Trustees of Reservations in 1993.
It is located next to the birthplace of suffragist Lucy Stone.
Ownership History.
The Rock House Reservation was an anonymous gift, with endowment, in 1993 in memory of William Adams. Additional land was then purchased in 2002. The Rock House Reservation began with the gift of a conservation restriction to The Trustees of Reservations by an anonymous donor in 1977 followed by a donation of the fee interest in 1993, in memory of William Adams. The reservation was expanded by 58 acres in 2002 with the addition of 50 acres on the Reservation’s western border, which had been acquired from John Cregan and Donald Richards, and an additional 8 acres, west of the Cregan and Richards parcel, from Maurice Labbe.
Natural Resources.
The Rock House reservation is located in the Lower Worcester Plateau/Eastern Connecticut Upland Ecoregion. Elevations at the Rock House range between 600 feet near its lowest elevation to more than 1,020 feet at its highest which makes up nearly the full range of elevation for the ecoregion. Rock outcrops and large surface boulders are common, and most are covered with lichens and ferns. The outcrop that gives the Reservation its name is among the largest and most dramatic.
Post agricultural second-growth mixed forest and conifer plantations cover much of the eastern half of the Reservation while an oak dominated forest, possibly containing primary forest, covers the western half. Carter’s Pond is a primary scenic feature near the center of the property. The two and a half acre pond is very shallow and was created in the 1920s or 1930s. A power line also bisects the Reservation creating early successional habitat. Several intermittent streams flow through the property, flowing south towards Route 9 and the Ware River. Woodland vernal pools are uncommon.
Carter Pond.
Carter Pond is a relatively shallow pond, with an area of about 2.5 acres and a watershed of about 8 acres. The pond has a healthy riparian zone (characterized by woody trees and shrubs) and healthy shoreline vegetation (characterized by sedges, grasses, rushes). Both of these areas provide important habitat for dragonflies, damselflies, mammals and amphibians.
The pond has an average depth of 1 meter and soft substrate that is characterized by inorganic sediment and undecomposed organic matter. Sunlight reaches the bottom of the substrate 40% of the time. The pond has a healthy pH and alkalinity, low levels of nitrates, phosphates and dissolved oxygen and high levels of suspended solids. Biologically, there is a high diversity of macroinvertebrate and fish populations but a low diversity and of submerged and floating aquatic plants.
It is unusual that Carter Pond has a low diversity of submerged aquatic plants, because shallow ponds usually have plants growing from shore to shore. In the case of Carter Pond, plant growth and reproduction might be limited by low levels of nitrogen and phosphorus. These nutrient deficiencies may be caused by the pond’s small pond-to-watershed ratio and/or lack of nutrient inflow from an upstream source. In addition, it is possible that the spring that feeds Carter Pond is nutrient-poor, although additional water quality testing will be needed to confirm or disprove this theory.
Carter Pond’s low abundance of aquatic plants may be contributing to another problem the pond is experiencing: low dissolved oxygen. This is because dissolved oxygen often enters the water as a byproduct of aquatic-plant photosynthesis. Thus, low numbers of aquatic plants can limit the amount of dissolved oxygen that enters the water. Lack of aeration due to stagnant water and/or warm water temperatures could also contribute to the low levels of dissolved oxygen in Carter Pond.
Carter Pond is also experiencing high levels of inorganic sediment in the water column. A visual observation of sediment deposition on the north bank suggests that sediment might be eroding into the pond from the north shore after heavy rains. This deposition could be a problem because it limits transparency, decreases benthic habitat diversity, and builds up on the bottom of the pond.
Carter Pond is also dealing with a build-up of organic matter, such as leaves and sticks, on the bottom of the pond. It is currently unclear why this accumulation is greater than decay, but it could be a result of low pond turnover rates, low numbers of decomposer in the benthic environments, or low dissolved oxygen
Threats to Natural Resources.
Erosion poses a major threat to this property along many of the trail. One of the trails most affected is the Fire Road, which is prone to erosion, which causes sediment to be deposited into Carter Pond. These deposits cause the siltation of the pond due which is impacts the aquatic ecosystem and could result in the eventual filling in of the pond. Recent repairs have helped to address erosion but anticipated impacts from climate change will make erosion on ongoing issue. Trail erosion is likely to increase because of recent intense thunder and rain storms, which have increased erosion.
Invasive plants are present but control efforts funded by the Landowner Incentive Program (LIP) over the past few years have helped control these species to the point that routine management should address future control needs. Knapweed is spreading along the power lines.
Deer also pose a threat to the natural resources at the reservation. When deer numbers are high, browsing pressures can impact forest regeneration and plant species composition. Current browsing pressures at Rock House do not appear to be obvious which could be due to surrounding lands and part of the Reservation which have been open to hunting.
Recreation.
The property is open year round, sunrise to sunset, for hiking, horseback riding, cross country skiing, and hunting (in season). Hunting is only permitted on the part of the property which lies west of the Outer Loop. Fishing is strictly prohibited. Dogs are allowed, but must be kept under voice control or on a leash. Mountain Bikes and Horseback Riders are permitted on the fire road only. The reservation offers more than 3 miles of trails and throughout the property and has moderate hiking which can be strenuous in places.


Weippe Prairie

Weippe Prairie is a "beautiful upland prairie field of about nine by twenty miles of open farmland bordered by pine forests" at 3,000 feet elevation in Clearwater County, Idaho, at Weippe, Idaho. Camas flowers grow well there, and attracted native gatherers of the camas roots. It is the location in Idaho where the Lewis and Clark Expedition emerged from crossing the Bitterroot Mountains on the Lolo Trail and first met the Nez Perce tribe of Native Americans.
The field is now part of Nez Perce National Historical Park.
On September 20, 1805 the first members of Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery, including Clark himself, emerged starving and weak onto the Weippe Prairie. There they encountered the Nez Perce, who were attracted to the area by the abundant hunting, as well as the fields of camas flowers, whose roots were a staple of their diet. The Nez Perce "had never before seen white men", and "proved to be the most helpful of the tribes which the explorers encountered in their travels". By September 22, 1805, the entire expedition made it to Weippe Prairie. Lewis and Clark met many of the Nez Perce chiefs. One of them, Red Bear, gave them dressed buckskins. Lewis and Clark reciprocated with presents of "beads and a few other articles". The Nez Perce "later found the white man's gifts to be cheap."
The Nez Perce purportedly were predisposed to be friendly to the white explorers due to the positive stories told by a young woman of their tribe who had been stolen and sold into slavery, eventually sold to and lived with white people, and then returned to the Nez Perce. This woman, named Watkuweis (meaning "returned from a faraway country"), when hearing of the arrival of Lewis and Clark, pleaded that they not be harmed. Her tales of the kindness she had experienced with the white people reportedly convinced the Nez Perce to offer friendship to the explorers. The Nez Perce provided camas root cakes and other food, helped them build canoes for their continued westward journey and mapped out the water route the expedition would follow. The expedition cached some materials there, and found the caches untouched when they returned in spring 1806. They also left the expedition's horses. The Nez Perce were divided about returning the horses, but the Corps eventually regained most of them. Upon their return in 1806, they spent an extended time from May to late June with the Nez Perce, due to the late spring in the Bitterroot Mountains.
The part of Weippe Prairie most associated with the Lewis and Clark expedition, covered with camas and close to the town of Weippe, Idaho, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1966. It is one of 38 scattered sites covered by the Nez Perce National Historical Park which interprets the site. The name Weippe, pronounced WEE-ipe, is derived from a Nez-Perce name whose meaning has been variously defined as a "very old place" or as referring to a spring of water or the camas grounds. A literal translation has not been found.
"This national historic landmark is also associated with the 1877 Nez Perce War; the nontreaty bands held a council on this prairie following the Clearwater Battle."


Timeline of the George H. W. Bush presidency

George H. W. Bush, a Republican from Texas, was elected President of the United States on November 8, 1988 and was inaugurated as the nation's 41st president on January 20, 1989, and his presidency ended on January 20, 1993 with the inauguration of Bill Clinton. The following articles cover the timeline of Bush's presidency:


Samuel Slaughter

Samuel Clarence Slaughter (1848 – May 23, 1910) was a New York banker and then a pioneer, real estate investor, and politician in Tacoma, Washington. Slaughter started his career in New York working for the banking firm Norton, Slaughter & Company for more than fifteen years. He came to Tacoma in 1883 and entered real estate. After over twenty years in the field, Slaughter was highly esteemed in Washington state real estate circles. He worked at Moore & Slaughter, and later was the chief partner at S. C. Slaughter & Company. He was known as a figure who contributed to city development and commercial growth.
Politically, Slaughter was a Democrat, and a member of the Democratic Club of Pierce County. He ran for the position of Tacoma City Controller several times and was elected in 1892, being the only Democratic candidate to succeed in that year's election cycle. He worked as City Controller for two years.
Early life, family and education.
Slaughter was born in 1848 in Culpeper County, Virginia, where he grew up and was educated. Slaughter's father was Dr. Phillip C. Slaughter, a Confederate Army surgeon during the American Civil War and a chief surgeon at Camp Lee. His ancestors came from Wales to settle in America in 1620. Slaughter's mother was Mary Slaughter (McDonald), whose ancestors came to America from Scotland.
Career.
New York.
After getting secondary school education, Slaughter went to New York and became a businessman there. He worked in the well-known banking firm of that time Norton, Slaughter & Company. Slaughter worked and lived in New York for more than fifteen years.
Real estate business.
Slaughter moved to Tacoma in 1882, becoming a pioneer real estate businessman of Washington State. At the time of his arrival, the area, was covered in forests.
In one of his first real estate dealings, he sold a lot located at the corner of Pacific Avenue and 11th street. That area later became "one of the most prominent" business areas of Tacoma, and the piece of land sold by Slaughter became the site for the Pacific National Bank.
Slaughter closed many real estate deals for property that later turned into well-known landmarks of the city. According to Prosser, one of the Washington State Historical Society founders, Slaughter closed more deals than the majority of other businessmen in the field at the time.
Around 1884–1885, Slaughter operated from a business building located on the northwest corner of Pacific Avenue and 13th Street. There, he worked in partnership with Henry K. Moore in the real estate and law firm called Moore & Slaughter. By 1903, Slaughter became chief partner in the firm S. C. Slaughter & Company. In his twenty years of real estate dealings in Tacoma, he was considered one of the "most progressive and enterprising citizens," and noted for his contributions to the city's development and commercial growth.
Political activity in Tacoma.
Politically, Slaughter was a Democrat and a member of the Democratic Club of Pierce County.
In 1890, Slaughter was nominated for the position of the Chairman of the County Commissioners, but he changed his mind to run in the Tacoma City Controller race. He lost to Republican candidate J. H. Houghton.
On April 5, 1892, Slaughter ran for City Controller again, and this time was elected. He was the only Democratic nominee to succeed in that year's elections, and worked at the position for two years.
Personal life.
In 1889, Slaughter married Julia C. Widgery in San Francisco. She was born in England, but later moved to America. She became well known in Tacoma as the founder of the Washington State Cooperative Society, the only female trustee for the Ferry Museum, and the president of the Tacoma Art League (which later developed into the Tacoma Art Museum).
In 1908, Slaughter was struck and injured by a car belonging to the Tacoma Railway & Power Company. The accident resulted in lawsuit filed in the Superior Court in 1909 for $2,000 ($53,000 in 2020 dollars).
On May 23, 1910, Slaughter died in Tacoma of heart disease.


Lillooet Cattle Trail

The Lillooet Cattle Trail, also known as the Lillooet-Burrard Cattle Trail and also as the Lillooet Trail, was an unusual and daring public works undertaking by the Province of British Columbia in the 1877, and was the largest 19th Century public works expenditure at $35,000 of the new province since its joining Canada in 1871.
History.
Faced with burgeoning stock populations in the Pemberton-Lillooet and Gang Ranch areas and a lack of easy access to the huge market supplying meat to construction crews of the Canadian Pacific Railway just east, largely because of a lack of bridge crossings of the Fraser River, the ranchers of the Lillooet area lobbied the provincial government, and MLA Humphreys, to finance a trail to the coast via the Pemberton and Squamish areas to the north shore of Burrard Inlet (i.e. what is now Vancouver harbour), at the mouth of the Seymour River. The track was started and followed a gold rush of 1862 route through the Seymour Watershed over to Mamquam and Indian Rivers to Squamish, and to follow a path, taken much later by the PGE, to the Lillooet area. Work crews started hacking and building in 1874 with the trail "finished' in 1877.
The trail's route was improbable, to say the least, hugging lakeside cliffs where, in places, trestles and floating platforms had to be built out above or onto the lake and, beyond that, through marshes and heavy forests beset by infamously thick mosquitos and, lastly, a tortuous "stairway" section of the trail over the pass between the Squamish area and the head of the Seymour River, where cattle were expected to use steps on a trail that was nowhere more than 6 yards wide.
Only one formal cattle drive was ever held over the full length of the route and most head were lost; those that finished the trip were put out to pasture to recuperate, being too skinny to be worth butchering. The multi-thousand-dollar loss incurred by trail construction left a bad taste with the provincial government for many years, although the son of its main sponsor, a rancher from Pavilion, later became provincial Minister of Highways and Public Works. Bridges to serve the cattle ranches of the West Fraser, including the suspension-span at Lillooet, were built in several places by the 1910s, although too late to keep the West Fraser Ranches competitive with those in the Thompson and Cariboo regions.
The trail remained in use in later years for residents of the Pemberton Valley for general travel purposes, and at least two more smaller cattle drives from that region to Squamish were attempted, both financial disasters as was the original one from Lillooet. The roadbed of the trail remained in place for many years, its stretch from Pemberton to Squamish ultimately being subsumed into the grade for the construction of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway through that stretch.
Route.
Basically the route started from North Vancouver to Lillooet. The trail went through Britannia, Squamish, Garibaldi to Pemberton. From here it followed the Douglas road, but at this time the water routes were replaced with roads and the trail made it all the way to Lillooet.


Timeline of Florida history

This is a timeline of the U.S. state of Florida.


Historic ferries in Oregon

Historic ferries in Oregon are water transport ferries that operated in Oregon Country, Oregon Territory, and the state of Oregon, United States. These ferries allowed people to cross bodies of water, mainly rivers such as the Willamette in the Willamette Valley, and the Columbia, in order to transport goods, move people, and further communications until permanent bridges were built to allow faster crossing of the water. The early ferries were used by wagons and pedestrians, while later ones transported trains and then automobiles. Oregon has a few automobile ferries still in operation.
Willamette River.
Early ferries.
The first recorded ferry in Oregon was on the Willamette River near present-day Wheatland. This ferry was built during 1843–1844 and operated by Jesse Applegate when he occupied the former Methodist Mission at Mission Bottom. Daniel Matheny later started the Wheatland Ferry in the 1850s around the same location.
The Michel Laframboise Ferry operated on the Willamette running between Champoeg on the south bank and the north bank of the river. The ferry operated from 1850 to 1857.
Boone's Ferry was operated, starting in 1847, by Alphonso Boone, grandson of Daniel Boone. This ferry remained in operation near Wilsonville until 1954, when a bridge was built over the Willamette near the ferry site.
Benton County.
About 1860, a ferry began crossing the Willamette River at Corvallis.
Polk and Marion counties.
Discontinued ferries in Polk and Marion County include the "Claggett" at Independence, which ran until 1950. Hales Ferry, near Jefferson, operated as early as 1846, and another Jefferson ferry was run by Jacob Conser in 1848. Doaks Ferry operated six miles (10 km) north of Salem. It was established in the 1840s by Andrew Jackson Doak, and sold in 1860 to Jesse Walling, who platted Lincoln, Oregon. Doaks Ferry Road is named for it. Spongs Ferry operated at Spong's Landing, now a Marion County park, on the opposite side of the river from Doaks. Halls Ferry operated beginning in 1868 about six miles (10 km) south of Salem, and Halls Ferry Road still exists today. The ferry was started by Isaac (or Noah) Leabo, who sold to it Benjamin Franklin (B. F.) Hall in either 1882 or 1884, when it became known as Halls Ferry. B. F. Hall's father, Reason B. Hall, was the founder of the Buena Vista Ferry in 1852, which still operates to this day. Halls Ferry changed hands twice and was subsequently renamed, first to "Croisan's Ferry" and later to "Pettyjohn's Ferry". It is uncertain when the ferry ceased operations. There was also a "Halls Ferry" railroad station at this locale.
Salem ferry.
The ferry in Salem was started by James White in 1846. White later partnered with Salem founder William H. Willson. Captain White died in the explosion of the steamer "Gazelle" at Canemah on April 8, 1854. At one point, his widow became the sole proprietor of the ferry until she partnered with Jasper N. Matheny, whose family was involved with the ferry business at Wheatland. The widow White eventually sold out to Matheny, who later formed a partnership that included James N. Glover, the founder of Spokane, Washington. Ownership of the ferry company changed several times—at one point, ownership included judge Reuben P. Boise—until the Secretary of State declared the company defunct in 1905.
Clackamas County.
Robert Moore operated a ferry between Linn City and Oregon City beginning in 1849, and Hugh Burns also operated a ferry around that time at Oregon City.
Lane County.
A. & L. Coryell's ferry near the confluence of the Middle and Coast forks of the Willamette operated as early as 1847.
Current ferries.
The only Willamette ferries still in operation are Wheatland, Buena Vista, and Canby.
Portland.
One of the first ferries operating in what is now Portland, Oregon was Switzler's ferry that crossed the Columbia River in 1846 between the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Vancouver and the south bank of the river. Then in 1848, Stephen Coffin established a ferry on the Willamette using a wooden platform over canoes. The Stark Street Ferry operated from 1855 until ferry traffic declined due to the opening of the Morrison Bridge in 1887, and the removal of tolls on the bridge in 1895. In 1888, the completion of a railroad bridge (the original Steel Bridge) allowed the Oregon & California Railroad to cease using their passenger ferry, which had begun operations in 1870, using barges to move the trains across the river.
 The Spokane Street Ferry, also called the Sellwood Ferry, shuttled passengers across the Willamette between Sellwood and west Portland. The final ferry, the "John F. Caples", was discontinued in 1925 when the Sellwood Bridge opened.
The last ferry service to operate in the Portland metropolitan area was the Sauvie Island Ferry, replaced in 1950 by the first Sauvie Island Bridge.
Columbia River.
Ferries crossing the Columbia included the steel "Kalama" (later "Tacoma") which transported trains between Kalama, Washington and Goble, Oregon. This train ferry was shipped in more than 50,000 parts around Cape Horn and assembled in Portland. This Northern Pacific Railroad ferry was long and wide and continued in use from 1883 until around 1910 when a railroad bridge across the river was built. The Astoria–Megler Ferry operated at the mouth of the Columbia, between Megler, Washington and Astoria, Oregon, until the Astoria-Megler Bridge was built in the 1960s. There was also a ferry between Biggs, Oregon and Maryhill, Washington.
Others.
The Oregon Coast had many ferries along its length, until the 1930s, when bridges were built across the bays for U.S. Route 101. At least one, Bullards Ferry across the Coquille River, lasted until the mid-1950s, when the Bullards Bridge replaced it. Other ferries operated in Southern Oregon to allow transit to California. To the east, Brownlee's Ferry began operating across the Snake River between Oregon and Idaho in 1862. Olds Ferry was founded upstream of Brownlee at Farewell Bend a year later.
Ferries also operated across the Tualatin River. These included Scholls Ferry at Scholls, operated by Peter Scholl. Scholl settled in the area in 1848, and began operating the ferry in 1850, along what was then the main route between Portland and the upper portions of the Willamette Valley. In the late 1850s, Scholl built a covered toll bridge across the river, but it was washed away in a flood. A more permanent bridge came in 1870, but the crossing became less important when Taylor's Ferry opened downstream. Philip Harris operated a ferry across the Tualatin at Farmington.
"Indian Mary" operated a ferry across the Rogue River in Southern Oregon in the late 19th century.


Native American languages of Utah

Utah, a state in the western United States that straddles the intersection of the Colorado Plateau, the Great Basin, and the Rocky Mountains, has been the traditional home of several Uto-Aztecan bands from a few tribes that are considered Paiute and Shoshone. The Shoshone in Utah belong to the Goshute and Northern Shoshone linguistic group, while the various Paiute peoples either belong to the Ute or Southern Paiute linguistic classifications. As such, in total, there are two Native American languages spoken in Utah: Shoshone and Colorado River Numic.
Distribution.
There are two Native American languages currently spoken in Utah. Population estimates are based on figures from Ethnologue and U.S. Census data, as given in sub-pages below. The two languages are shown in the table below:


Western Huetar Kingdom

The Western Huetar Kingdom, also called Lordship of Garabito, Kingdom of Garabito or Cacicazgo of Garabito, was an Amerindian nation located in Costa Rica. It was one of the two great indigenous kingdoms of the central part of the country, the other was the Eastern Huetar Kingdom or Lordship of El Guarco. It was made up of a confederation of smaller chieftains, subject to the authority of high chiefs who paid tribute to a major chieftain. It was located in the Central Valley of Costa Rica, spanning from the Pacific coast to the west bank of the Virilla River, following the Tárcoles river basin. At the time of the arrival of the Spaniards to Costa Rica, in the 16th century, the main towns were located in the plains of Esparza, Orotina and San Mateo, where King Garabito had his capital, who was the most important leader to sit during the Spanish conquest, in a place known as the Coyoche Valley, on the banks of the Susubres River, the current canton of San Mateo. At the time of contact, the nearby Kingdom of the Botos, located in the plains north of the Central Volcanic Mountain Range, paid tribute to the West.


Amalga, Alaska

Amalga is a former gold-mining town outside of Juneau, Alaska. The area is now part of the Tongass National Forest. The Library of Congress has a photograph of Amalga by Winter & Pond in its collection. The area was once homesteaded and farmed. A horse tram brought goods delivered by steamship to the mine.
Amalga had a post office near the Eagle River Mine. Amalga was established in 1902 and abandoned by 1927.


Margaret Carter

Margaret Louise Carter (née Hunter; December 29, 1935) is an American politician who was a Democratic member of the Oregon Legislative Assembly from 1985 to 1999 and 2001 to 2009 and was the first black woman elected to the state's legislature. She served in the Oregon House of Representatives until 1999, and then in the Oregon State Senate from 2001 to 2009. She served as President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Vice Chair for Ways and Means, and as a member of both the Health and Human Services and Oregon State Hospital Patient Care committees. She announced her resignation from the Senate effective August 31, 2009, and took a post as Deputy Director for Human Services Programs at the Oregon Department of Human Services. In 2015, she was reportedly considering a return to the senate.
Early life.
Born Margaret Hunter in Shreveport, Louisiana, on December 29, 1935, her parents were Hilton and Emma Hunter. She was raised there in a family of nine children by her father, a Baptist minister, and her mother, a cook at the school cafeteria. After earning the honor as salutatorian in high school, she received scholarships to Grambling State University where she then briefly attended before meeting who would become her first husband. After getting married she had five daughters by the age of 28, but moved to Oregon to escape abuse by her then husband. She arrived via train on December 1, 1967, and began working odd jobs. In Oregon, she re-married, adding four stepchildren, but divorced after a few years to Elvis. In 1970, she enrolled at Portland State University where she then graduated from in 1972 with a bachelor of arts degree in education. Carter then earned a masters of education in psychology from Oregon State University in 1973. In 1973, Carter began working for Portland Community College as a counselor.
Political career.
Republican leaders recruited Carter to run for a seat in the Oregon House of Representatives in 1983. They hoped to unseat the incumbent in a heavily Democratic district in Northeast Portland. Carter won as a Democrat in 1984 and began serving at the 1985 legislative session representing District 18. She became the first African-American woman elected to the Oregon Legislative Assembly. In the House she worked to pass legislation that ended state controlled investments in South Africa during apartheid and legislation to observe Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday as a state holiday. In 1989 she advocated for Blacks to join the Urban League of Portland.
In 1998, she was a candidate for the office of Oregon Superintendent of Public Instruction, but lost to Stan Bunn. Carter was a member of the Oregon House until January 1999, when term limits prevented her from seeking additional terms. In November 1999, she became the president of the Urban League of Portland, serving until May 2002. Also in 1999 she retired from Portland Community College. She was then elected to the Senate in November 2000. In 2005, she became president pro tempore of the Oregon State Senate and was unopposed in the 2008 election.
In 2010, she was awarded the Legislator of the Year Award from the Oregon Library Association.
Later life.
She resigned from the Oregon Senate in 2009 in order to take a job at the Oregon Department of Human Services. The hiring was criticized since the new position paid $121,872 annually, which, along with other similar moves to the public sector by other legislators, led to the introduction of several bills to curtail such practices. None of the bills ever became law. Carter became director of community engagement in 2012 and saw her salary decreased.


University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History

The University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History, commonly known as the UO Natural History Museum, is an American natural history museum at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Located near Hayward Field on the east side of the UO campus, it is the largest natural history museum between Seattle and San Francisco and a center for archaeological and paleontological research in the Pacific Northwest and the wider world. The museum headquarters and public spaces are located at 1680 East 15th Avenue in a building inspired by the design of Pacific Northwest Native longhouses.
History.
The museum traces its origins to the creation of the University of Oregon in 1876, when state geologist Thomas Condon was hired as one of the first three UO professors, bringing his extensive fossil collection with him. The Oregon State Legislative Assembly created the Oregon State Museum of Anthropology (OSMA) at the UO in 1935, under the direction of archaeologist Luther Cressman. In 1936, the Condon Museum and State Museum of Anthropology were folded into the newly created UO Museum of Natural History, also directed by Luther Cressman. Since Cressman retired in the 1960s, the museum has had a series of distinguished directors, including J. Arnold Shotwell, Alice Parman, Don Dumond, C. Melvin Aikens, and now Jon Erlandson.
Collections.
Today the museum has four divisions: the Condon Paleontological Collection; an Archaeological Research Division (a.k.a. OSMA), an Anthropological Collections division, and a Public Programs Division. The museum's collections include: nearly 100,000 fossils from Oregon, the Pacific Northwest, and around the world; nearly a million archaeological artifacts, including the famous Fort Rock sandals. that are among the oldest shoes in the world (~10,000 years old); extensive ethnographic collections from cultures worldwide, including over 1500 Native American baskets; and thousands of comparative specimens from modern or historical birds (and their eggs and nests), mammals, reptiles, marine and freshwater shells, and other organisms. The museum displays many of these artifacts, fossils, and objects in its exhibit halls, along with revolving exhibits highlighting the work of Pacific Northwest artists and other cultural and natural history themes. Surrounding the museum is a Native plant garden, a geological time line, and a replica of the Willamette Meteorite. The museum's new website also includes over 20 web galleries featuring objects from its collections.
The Museum is the official repository for archaeological and paleontological collections from the state of Oregon and has a responsibility to preserve and interpret these materials in perpetuity. Museum staff members work closely with a variety of communities, from UO students and staff to thousands of K-12 students and teachers from the surrounding area, community members and volunteers, visiting researchers, and other visitors from around the world. Research and collections staff also collaborate with many local, state, and federal agencies and other institutions to conduct research and store collections for future research and interpretation. Tribal members worked closely with museum staff in designing exhibits and creating replicas for displays that highlight the deep history of Native American tribes in four geographic regions of Oregon: the Northwest Coast, Columbia Plateau, Great Basin, and Willamette Valley. The geological, paleontological, and natural history of the Pacific Northwest is also interpreted and illustrated with objects from the museum's collections. Museum research is also shared with the public through the University of Oregon Anthropological Papers series, which recently printed its 69th volume.


Fort Hill State Memorial

Fort Hill State Memorial is a Native American earthwork located in Highland County, Ohio, United States. Built by the Hopewell culture, it is maintained by the Arc of Appalachia Preserve System and the Ohio History Connection.
The earthwork, built about 2,000 years ago, is a walled enclosure made of soil on top of a flat summit. It is higher than nearby portions of Ohio Brush Creek and 800 higher than the Ohio River. It was made by the Hopewell people. It is over 1½ miles in circumference, enclosing . Thirty-nine "man-made openings" occur throughout the enclosure: thirty-six that are verified as being made by Indians and three others still unknown as to how they were made. The wall is 6–15 feet high and its total length is . It is 30 feet wide at its base in most areas. Archaeologists believe it was not used as a fort, but instead as a religious site.
In 1846, it was excavated by Ephraim George Squier and Edwin Hamilton Davis. It was featured in their book "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley", which was published in 1848.
Fort Hill State Memorial contains excellent outcrops of Silurian, Devonian, and Mississippian sedimentary bedrock and a natural bridge. The site is also an example of glacial stream reversal. It was named a National Natural Landmark in 1974.