“What is important about them is that they can tell us about the actual past, not merely evoke a feeling about it. Trails are actual transportation routes that took people somewhere. What is important to preserve is all aspects of that world that help us understand what it was like, and something about the people who lived in it. We may make judgments about that world from our perspective in the present but we need to know about it first, and everything we preserve of it gives us a better picture.”

Retired BLM Manager Marilyn Nickels, on the importance and protection of National Historic Trails.