Hi Trail Fans Happy New Year! This year I'm hoping to feature just sites that are specific to a certain trail or portion of a trail in the West, starting with "Travel The Bozeman Trail." http://www.bozemantrail.org/index.htm The Bozeman Trail is unique among trails in the American West, cutting through the last and best hunting grounds of the Northern Plains Indians, and led to military occupation of the region, ultimately resulting in the Indian wars on the Northern Plains. This excellent website explores the history of the Bozeman Trail which overlaid ancient Paleo-Indian and buffalo routes. It was a microcosm of the history of the West, with about every kind of people who lived in, traveled through, or settled the West represented. Included are diary accounts, military reports, and first hand thoughts about the land and place surrounding the trail, from a Crow Scout for Custer to fieldnotes from a modern day exploratory expedition. This site also serves as a guide for the modern traveler of the trail, with museums listed (from south to north) along the trail, a Bozeman Trail Corridor map, events occurring along the trail in 2002, and a gallery of photos, both historic and modern. I hope that you'll all take the opportunity to explore this website. Lots of good up-to-date information, a nicely designed site which is easy to get around. Don't forget to visit previous Spotlights at: http://www.over-land.com/spotlite.html and also I welcome e-mail suggesting a future Spotlight. Liz

I am reading a newspaper story about one of my wife's early Oregon pioneer relatives and I came across this... ..."in a hewed log cabin, with cedar pouncheon for a floor"... what is a "cedar pouncheon"??? Jim