This photo gallery contains highlights from my tracing of the Nez Perce National Historic Trail with my daughter, Sassia, in late May and early June of 2021. The trail follows the heroic 1877 flight of non-treaty Nez Perce bands, which were pursued by the U.S. Army for not relocating to a reservation in Idaho.
We started in Missoula, Montana, and joined the trail in Lolo, Montana, and our 16-day road trip took us 3,340 miles through Montana and Wyoming to Bear Paw National Battlefield, where the Nez Perce surrendered just 40 miles from the Canadian border. If driven in a straight line from our home in Seattle, Washington, our mileage would have taken us to Baxter State Park in northern Maine. We ended in Billings, Montana.
Sassia and I visited five historic battlefields — Big Hole, Camas Meadows, Canyon Creek, Little Bighorn and Bear Paw — as well as Glacier, Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. All the battlefields, except Little Bighorn, are units of Nez Perce National Historical Park.
Along the way, we had memorable stays in Missoula (MT), Wisdom (MT), West Yellowstone (MT), Old Faithful Snow Lodge (WY), Gardiner (MT), Jackson (WY), Jackson Lake Lodge (WY), Cody (WY), Cooke City (MT) and Billings (MT). Sassia and I were two Asian Americans navigating #StopAsianHate, and the very beginning of this country’s re-opening from Covid-19 lockdown in largely small towns in Montana and Wyoming.
The trip was made possible by support from Dale Willman, director of the Resilience Journalism Fellowship, where I was a fellow in 2019, and funding from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism of The City University of New York (CUNY).
For more details and social-media posts from the #NezPerceTrail2021 road trip:
https://trailposse.com/nez-perce-trail/
This trip also provided the basis for a three-part essay in YES! Magazine:
Clicking on any image below will launch a full-sized gallery.
