Former Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts said the efforts to plan and build the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center were an incredible accomplishment of federal, state, city and county agencies as well as charitable foundations and community members.

“It’s amazing to think of the teamwork that made (the center) possible,” Roberts told the Herald before she spoke during the center’s 25th anniversary celebration Thursday morning.

As governor, Roberts, now 80, attended the center’s groundbreaking, its ribbon-cutting and grand opening ceremony on May 25, 1992, and its 10th anniversary.

But Roberts also feels a familial connection to the center on Flagstaff Hill about five miles east of Baker City.

Her ancestors crossed the Oregon Trail in 1853 to first settle in Polk County, near Salem.

“It feels like personal family history when I walk in here,” Roberts said.

At 9 a.m. Thursday, several dozen people who were involved in the center’s creation reminisced before Roberts and several others spoke to a crowd of about 120 people in the Leo Adler Theater inside the BLM-operated center.

Guests were treated to live folk music, sweet and savory treats and an anniversary cake.

Center Director Sarah LeCompte said the silver celebration was about the people involved in making the center possible, as well as the ones who have been responsible for its success in the past quarter century.

“This has been fantastic. It really warms the heart,” LeCompte said as she looked around the room at the many people who had shown up for the celebration. “I’m happy to see everyone get together and reminisce.”

Dave Hunsaker, who was the project leader for the center’s development and its first director, said it was a great day.

“It really shows the level of commitment of everyone involved,” Hunsaker said. “All involved are fortunate to have this group of public and private to make this happen.”

Hunsaker and Roberts both said it hardly seems possible that 25 years have passed since the center opened.

As emcee of the event, LeCompte said she had been seeing a lot of hugging and handshaking before she introduced Shane DeForrest, associate director for the BLM’s Vale District.

He said the building is in good shape after 25 years. But like LeCompte, DeForrest pointed out that the celebration is really about the people involved in the center’s development and continued operation.

“This was a very ambitious project,” DeForrest said. “So please do throughout the day … take an opportunity to enjoy the company of your fellow Oregon Trail Center interested parties and folks and let’s keep this thing going on further.”

Before introducing Roberts, LeCompte said the center began as an economic development project in the mid 1980s.

“It was a time when things weren’t going so well in Eastern Oregon and people wanted to change that and make things happen by developing tourism in Eastern Oregon,” LeCompte said. “It took a lot of community partnerships, regional partnerships, a lot of very dynamic individuals to build it and keep it going. It’s not just another tourist attraction. It’s a high-quality heritage site.”

More than 2.2 million people, from all over the world, have visited the center.

“We even had someone from Antarctica once,” LeCompte said.

She recognized the immense contributions of the Trail Tenders, a nonprofit group of volunteers whose mission is to enhance the quality of the educational and recreational programs for the public benefit within the center, and to further the center’s goals throughout Baker County.

“You’re some of our favorite folks,” LeCompte said of the Trail Tenders.

Roberts took the podium to hearty applause from the crowd.

She asked the audience to imagine her excitement, as a descendent of pioneers, to help dedicate the center as governor in 1992.

“It was so special to everyone and it felt very personal for me,” Roberts said.

She said the center commemorates a migration that stands as one of the more remarkable human feats to take place on the continent.

“History is meant not to sit on a shelf collecting dust but to think about, to talk about, to share and to learn from,” Roberts said.

She pointed out that Oregon has a unique collection of firsthand accounts of pioneers who undertook the six-month trek along the Oregon Trail.

“(That trek) was captured in hundreds and hundreds of diaries,” Roberts said. “And I will mention written almost entirely by women and teenage girls who were on those wagon trains. They recorded the challenges, the births, the deaths, the changing landscapes, the hardships and of course the hopes. They preserved that history of this massive migration west for all of the generations that followed.”

Roberts said those accounts have the ability to not only record and educate people about history, but to transport readers to another time, place and experience.

See more in the May 26, 2017, issue of the Baker City Herald.