Scotts Bluff National Monument: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Scotts Bluff National Monument, National Park Service
2014. Scotts Bluff National Monument: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Scotts Bluff National Monument, National Park Service. Cultural Landscapes Inventory Report. 50001. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. Omaha, Nebraska
The Scotts Bluff Monument landscape contains eroded sandstone bluffs rising above the relatively flat plains of western Nebraska. Although it is significant for these natural features that helped to guide westbound settlers, it is also significant as a designed landscape for its development between 1919 and 1958. Significant features of this landscape include roads, trails, and visitor facilities, developed through depression-era work programs using CCC and WPA labor. Features associated with the Oregon Trail, including several geological landforms and the extant trail ruts, form a separate component landscape and provided the basis for the 1919 presidential proclamation establishing Scotts Bluff National Monument. Although the Monument was originally developed to recognize geological and historical significance of the Oregon Trail through Mitchell Pass, the designed landscape possesses historic importance in its own right as a representative example of the public works projects that were completed in national parks across the country during the Depression Era. The monument landscape also possesses historic importance as an example of Mission 66 development completed at Scotts Bluff in 1958. Features of this era of development at Scotts Bluff exemplify the National Park Service’s architectural and landscape design style at that time, expressed through the use of regional building styles and construction methods.
- Type
- Published Report
- Date of Issue
- 2014-10
- Publisher
- U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
- Units
- MWR , SCBL
- Keywords
- CCC, Civilian Conservation Corps, Designed Landscape, Exploration-Settlement, Great Depression, Historic Site, Landscape Architecture, Mission 66, Mitchell Pass, Oregon Trail, Pony Express, Public Works, Road, Trail, Visitor Facilities, Westward Expansion, Works Progress Administration, WPA