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Written by AI Quotations are verbatim from the documents cited: Dr. Zybach's own words, and for Coquelle Trails his and Don Ivy's. The connecting text was written by AI. He has not reviewed this page.

Reading level KidPlainScholar The wording changes. The facts don’t.

The method is the product

The product here is a research method rather than a dataset: reconstructing a parcel's history from several lines of evidence, cross-checked, with its gaps stated. The method is drawn from the published work of Dr. Bob Zybach, forest historian and the Library's reference librarian.

The sources are four published documents (1999, 2003, 2011, and 2013, the last with Don Ivy). Each method below is quoted from its document with printed page, with AI-written commentary, followed by the 19 types of information from the 1999 thesis and full references.

Oral histories: asking the people who remember

From Using Oral Histories to Document Changing Forest Cover Patterns: Soap Creek Valley, Oregon, 1500-1999 (1999)

Written by AI

The 1999 master's (MAIS) thesis (Soap Creek Valley, Benton County, Oregon) tested oral-history methodology as a way to document forest-cover change: selection of credible first-hand informants, consistent recorded interviews, transcripts audited against the recordings (often by the informants), and triangulation against documentary and scientific sources.

In his words

  1. “Oral histories are tape recorded and transcribed interviews with individuals that document living memory.”

    The working definition: recorded and transcribed interviews documenting living memory.

  2. “Two criteria were applied to all selections: participants must have had a first-hand knowledge of events in Soap Creek Valley and they must have lived or worked in the area for a significant period of time.”

    Selection rested on first-hand knowledge and long residence or work in the study area.

  3. “Older participants were given priority and interviewed first whenever possible. This precedence, or bias, was considered worthwhile because the oldest members of potential interviewees held the earliest and most fragile memories of Soap Creek Valley.”

    An explicit, acknowledged sampling bias toward the oldest informants, whose memories reached furthest and were most at risk.

  4. “Specific artifacts, including maps (Rowley 1994), aerial photographs (Glender 1994), sketches (Rawie 1994), prehistoric tools (Hanish 1994), and even broken glass, old bricks, and nails (Hindes 1996) were used to obtain informant interpretations and stimulate memories regarding specific events, times, and/or places.”

    Material and visual prompts (maps, air photos, sketches, artifacts) were used to elicit interpretation and recall.

  5. “Subjects were informed of their right to stop interviews at any time, to decline answering uncomfortable questions, and to have their own questions answered regarding interviewer’s motives, qualifications, and/or interests in the study.”

    Informed consent and the informant's control over the interview were built into the procedure.

  6. “Copies of transcriptions were read and amended while listening to the recordings (“audited”) by people present during the interview (Baum 1985). The interviewees were often the best people for this step because they were most aware of who and what was talked about, general accuracy, how names were spelled, what they had intended to say, and what had been left unsaid.”

    Transcripts were "audited" against the recordings, often by the interviewees themselves.

  7. “Criteria is often established through methods which corroborates the information obtained from the interviewee (primary source) with information derived from alternate or multiple credible sources, such as signed documents, photographs, news reports, and scientific research.”

    Credibility is often established by corroborating informant testimony with other credible sources: signed documents, photographs, news reports and scientific research.

Good for

Detail and interpretation for roughly the last century, cross-checking of other sources, and access to privately held documents.

“Living memory was also the most useful type of information for triangulation tests of reliability and/or validity (Hoffman 1996) in that several different individuals could be queried easily at any given point in time regarding particular details, sources of information, or observations.”

“In many instances, informants added important insights and details regarding documents that related to their own experiences, and often provided such documentation themselves.”

What it can’t tell you

Testimony is open to error, self-interest and distance in time; in the thesis, where a document showed a remembered detail wrong, the edited transcript was corrected with a note while the recording preserved what was said.

“Data obtained from human subjects is frequently criticized as potentially inaccurate, self-serving, or even fabricated (Boss et al., 1993; Hoffman 1996). Little reliance is often placed on the spoken memories of others, particularly if the informant is a stranger, information is second or third hand, or memories are of times long past (Montell 1996; Moss 1996).”

“The recording can always be used to determine exactly what was said, and the oral historian can safely quote transcribed text with assurance that historical documentation is given priority over human recollection.”

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Clip to come: Bob on oral history interviews

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Aerial photographs: a map of one exact day

From The Great Fires: Indian Burning and Catastrophic Forest Fire Patterns of the Oregon Coast Range, 1491-1951 (2003)

Written by AI

In The Great Fires (2003), air photos, mainly from 1939 to 1966, served as time-specific landscape maps: persistent survey and claim boundaries, prairie relicts and trail traces were read from them and compared with GLO notes and historical vegetation maps. For periods before photography their use was interpretive, not documentary.

In his words

  1. “Aerial photographs are, in effect, highly detailed and time-specific maps of landscape patterns. Before aerial photography came into widespread use in the 1930s, people had to use maps or visit scenic vistas to consider landscape scale patterns of vegetation and human constructs.”

    In the dissertation, air photos are read as dated, highly detailed landscape maps.

  2. “Aerial photography was first implemented in Oregon in the 1920s by such organizations as the USDA Forest Service, the Oregon State Highway Commission, and the US Soil Conservation Service.”

    Early coverage came from federal and state agencies.

  3. “The University of Oregon has the most complete collection of aerial photographs available in Oregon, but businesses such as W.A.C. (Western Aerial Contractors) in Eugene and organizations such as the Forest Service maintain extensive collections that allow for the purchase and/or use of individual "site-and time-specific" sequences.”

    Holdings as described in 2003; see the records directory for present-day access.

  4. “General Land Office (GLO) subdivision and Donation Land Claim (DLC) boundary lines dating to the early 1850s are clearly apparent a century later as the straight courses of roads, fence lines, crop borders, and logging boundaries.”

    In the 1948 Alsea photograph, survey and claim lines of the early 1850s persist as roads, fences, crop borders and logging boundaries.

  5. “Fenced and plowed bottomland prairies, grassy meadows, ridgeline trails, hillside scatterings, and other pre-contact landscape patterns can also be easily discerned.”

    Pre-contact vegetation and travel patterns remained legible beneath later land use.

  6. “[Compare the persistent patterns of trails and vegetation shown on this aerial photograph and on Map D.04, with GLO surveys of the same area, performed from 1856-1897.]”

    The dissertation checks air photos against the GLO surveys of the same area.

Good for

Dated, repeatable evidence of land cover and land use from the 1930s on, and a check on maps and survey reconstructions.

“Boundaries of Rycraft's 1856 survey are still readily apparent today, as evidenced by aerial photography (Figure 2.03).”

“As noted, this photograph is of a lesser quality that subsequent aerials taken after WW II, yet it contains a remarkable amount of information regarding drainage patterns and locations, ridgeline alignments, forest and prairie areas and boundaries; even such detailed data as tree crown sizes and locations, and whether individual trees are living or dead (“snags”).”

(He is describing a 1939 aerial photograph taken over Abbott Butte, in the Tiller study area.)

What it can’t tell you

No direct evidence before the 1920s; each frame is a single moment, and earlier conditions can only be inferred.

“Because aerial photography didn't exist during the time of Indian burning or, in a practical sense, prior to the 1933 Tillamook Fire, its use in this dissertation is limited principally to interpretive--rather than documentary--purposes.”

“Finally, it should be noted that although this study covers nearly five centuries in time and millions of acres of forests and grasslands, each landscape pattern that is shown represents only a point in time for a selected area. A landscape is altered dramatically between the day before a fire and the day after a fire; during the time of a fire it can change even more dramatically from minute to minute.”

Try it on your land

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Clip to come: Bob on reading aerial photographs

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Land surveys and landscape patterns: the surveyor's notebook

From The Great Fires: Indian Burning and Catastrophic Forest Fire Patterns of the Oregon Coast Range, 1491-1951 (2003)

Written by AI

The 2003 dissertation treated General Land Office plats and field notes (western Oregon, about 1851-1910) as a systematic, spatially fixed sample of vegetation and land use: bearing-tree species and diameters, line descriptions, township general descriptions and recorded improvements, mapped and generalized in GIS, with attention to survey dates, error, fraud and surveyor bias.

In his words

  1. “GLO land survey records have been long accepted as useful measures of past environmental conditions (Whitney and DeCant 2001: 147). These records have specific advantages over other early historical sources of information in being a definite sampling of vegetation, written on location, and in accordance to a predetermined plan (Bourdo 1956: 755).”

    A systematic sample, recorded in situ, under a predetermined plan.

  2. “Before 1851, these lines were absent from the environment. Since that time they have served as an exacting index to specific trees, points, locations and cultural artifacts on specific days in time.”

    The survey grid serves as a spatial and temporal index for the observations recorded along it.

  3. “Surveyors regularly noted specific types and species of plants and whether forest fires had entered the area, or not.”

    Line notes record vegetation type, species and evidence of fire.

  4. “Bearing trees were carefully marked, identified as to species and general condition, measured for diameter, and located by distance and compass bearing from each corner.”

    Bearing trees supply species, diameter and exact position: point data on forest composition and size.

  5. “Because DLCs often had six, eight, or more corners, and because they included trees well-within the boundaries of section lines, these surveys provide us with far more exacting information--particularly near the center of the sections in which they are located--than surveys of sections that do not include DLCs (see maps 3.03 and 3.04).”

    Donation Land Claim surveys add interior corners and bearing trees, densifying the sample.

  6. “Subdivision surveys of unclaimed lands--typically steep, forested, and/or burned tracts that remained in the public domain because they were unsuitable for most agriculture or grazing purposes--were often delayed for a period of twenty to fifty years after initial township boundaries had been established.”

    Survey dates vary within a township; rough unclaimed land was often subdivided decades later.

Good for

Reconstruction of vegetation and land use at first survey and, by inference, earlier; strongest when read across many sections.

“This study demonstrates the potential of GLO maps and survey notes to make good estimates of precontact land use patterns and resource management practices.”

“By studying an area of tens of thousands of acres in size, it is possible to consider vegetation patterns at a landscape level. At this scale GLO data are particularly useful (Schulte and Mladenoff 2001: 7-8).”

What it can’t tell you

Surveyor error, occasional poor work and bias are documented; bias is of little consequence at broad scales but can weigh more on a single section, and small cultural features were likely under-recorded.

“In addition to surveyor error, fraud and statistical bias have been other causes for concern regarding the quality and usefulness of GLO data. Fraud is a minor problem, although not unknown, with GLO surveys.”

“Statistical tests have demonstrated that, while bias certainly exists, it is of little consequence when considered in context of the entire body of work or when considering broad spatial scales (Bourdo 1956:760-767; Schulte and Miadenoff 2001: 7; Whitney and DeCant 2001: 155).”

“They were probably not trained to recognize such localized features as elk pits, peeled trees, or rock ovens.”

(“They” are the General Land Office surveyors.)

Try it on your land

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Clip to come: Bob on reading a surveyor's field notes

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Maps: old lines on new paper

From Coquelle Trails: Early Historical Roads and Trails of Ancestral Coquille Indian Lands, 1826 - 1875. Volume I, Part 1: Making the Trail Maps (2013), by Bob Zybach and Don Ivy

Written by AI

Part 1 of Coquelle Trails (Zybach & Ivy 2013) documented a workflow from GLO plats and field notes, through later geologic and ownership maps (1890s, 1941), to annotated USGS field maps, GIS layers and GPS-referenced ground-truthing. Confidence was carried by line style and recorded editorial choice rather than a numerical score.

In the authors' words

  1. “This project is based on traditional archival research methods, followed by physical transcription of data to maps, and then location and documentation in the field.”

    Archival research, transcription to maps, then field location and documentation.

  2. “Fig. 5 shows another type of map used in this research: a geological map from the late 1890s, first printed in 1903 and apparently showing pre-automobile roads and trails to a very accurate degree at that time.”

    Maps made for other purposes (here a USGS geologic atlas) can preserve contemporary routes.

  3. “Note the differences in Port Orford between the maps, but also the similarity in road and trail alignments between 1875 and 1941.”

    Comparison of the same township across 1875-1941 maps shows persistent route alignments.

  4. “The thin red lines with yellow high-lighter were transcribed as possible foot-trail routes, with solid lines depicting existing road and trail surfaces, and dotted lines showing predicted (but undocumented) or documented (but no longer depicted) trail locations.”

    Line style encodes evidential status: extant, predicted, or documented but no longer mapped.

  5. “One of the more helpful conditions during field work on this project was the combination of “clear skies and clearcuts” along the ridgeline roads we drove. These allowed for wonderful perspectives of the surrounding landscape, including likely, possible, and improbable trail locations.”

    Field observation from vantage points; candidate routes were graded in words (likely, possible, improbable).

  6. “Following field work, the “pinkish” highlighter in Fig. 7 was used to show the final editorial decisions made by the authors following much discussion and consideration of the possible alternative routes and the documentation that supported each alternative.”

    Final route selection was an explicit, recorded editorial judgment among documented alternatives.

  7. “Each time a specific reference was located, it was scanned or photographed and entered into an Excel file database; then printed, annotated with the name of the surveyor and date the observations were written, and filed in a folder labeled with the individual township in which the notes were made.”

    Each extract was captured, attributed (surveyor, date) and filed by township for cross-reference.

Good for

Locating and dating routes and features by comparing successive maps on the common survey grid.

“However, GLO surveys remain among our most valuable sources of information for documenting and considering early historical conditions (Zybach 2002).”

“Final historical trail locations based on this research are shown in context to modern locations and indexed by legal descriptions that can be easily referenced in Vol. II of this report.”

What it can’t tell you

Single mapped alignments cannot represent ephemeral routes, and in the Coquelle study area the earliest surveys post-date the displacement of the original inhabitants.

“Virtually all of the original land surveys completed by General Land Office (GLO) Surveyors in the study area were conducted after the original Indian residents had died, been murdered, or exiled to a reservation (Fig. 2; Fig. 3; Fig. 4; Vol. II, Part 2.4).”

“Ephemeral trails are those routes that change locations from time to time: whether every day, every season, or every few years. Trail locations typically shift in a back and forth pattern, depending on tides, landslides, fallen trees, seasonal stream flows, and other factors that affect well-traveled routes along ocean sands, bay mudflats, or river banks.”

Try it on your land

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Clip to come: Bob on laying old maps over new ones

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How the pieces fit together

From Tiller Pre-Contact Reference Condition Study: Final Report (2011)

Written by AI

The Tiller Pre-Contact Reference Condition Study (2011) applied the "method of multiple hypotheses": all relevant evidence, a reasoned answer from its weight, then refined questions. Four overlapping steps; triangulation, with three or more concordant sources treated as generally establishing a fact; and an anomaly between layers that needed field observations and measurements to be better understood.

In his words

  1. “Research for this project was conducted in four basic steps: archival research and literature review, predictive field map construction, “ground-truthing” the predictive map (field research), and synthesis. These are not discrete steps in any sense, and usually two or three were being undertaken at the same time throughout the course of this project.”

    Archival research, predictive mapping, ground-truthing and synthesis, overlapping in practice.

  2. “Research for this project was conducted using the “method of multiple hypotheses,” first described by Chamberlin in 1890 (Chamberlin 1965) as: "the effort is to bring up into view every rational explanation of new phenomena, and to develop every tangible hypothesis respecting their cause and history." This method involves approaching a specific research question with all information available from relevant disciplines; making a reasoned answer to the question based on the weight of the gathered evidence; and then posing more specific questions that can then be asked in order to better consider the original hypothesis (see Chapter VIII).”

    Chamberlin's multiple hypotheses: comprehensive evidence, a weighted answer, and refined follow-up questions.

  3. “In oral history research, practitioners often use “triangulation” to establish the credibility of informants, and the reliability of their information (Hoffman 1996; Zybach 1999): if three (or more) sources of information can be shown to be in agreement, then the resulting conclusion can generally be assumed a “fact.””

    Triangulation, as the report described it from oral history practice: when three or more sources agree, the conclusion can generally be assumed a fact.

  4. “Following (but not discontinuing) background investigations accomplished by literature review, discussions with knowledgeable individuals, and archival research, predictive maps were constructed to guide subsequent field work activities.”

    Predictive maps, built from the background research, directed the field effort.

  5. “The combination of these three elements -- GLO field survey notes (and plats), Osborne panoramic photographs, and aerial photographs – before the post-WW II advent of major road building and logging activities, provides a highly detailed and accurate depiction of forest conditions in transition from precontact time to now.”

    Sources from before post-war road building and logging (GLO notes and plats, Osborne panoramas, air photos) together gave a detailed transitional picture.

  6. “There is an anomaly along the North-South Trail and the ca. 1800 vegetation patterns that are shown, however, which relied on field observations and measurements in order to be better understood.”

    An anomaly between layers along the North-South Trail was better understood through field observations and measurements.

  7. “Brief answers are also supplied for each question, based on the current findings of this study, but with the idea that entirely different answers might be forthcoming with additional data or alternative perspectives.”

    The conclusions were offered as provisional and open to revision.

Good for

Defensible conclusions from concordant sources, and detection of error in individual sources through comparison.

“A comparison of aerial photographs to mapped vegetation patterns (Table 2.01) provides excellent insights regarding the quality of map construction and content and good documentation of landscape-scale forest patterns at a given point in time.”

“In fact, most of the timber volume of Douglas-fir at that time was in the forms of saplings, poles, and second-growth, as shown by analysis of the subsequent data sources.”

(“At that time” is when the 1936 USDA vegetation map was made.)

What it can’t tell you

Thin records limit inference, and computed figures can imply false precision.

“There is very little history or other information available about the people who lived in the study area 200 years ago.”

“This rounding process is for two reasons: partly to make the numbers and percentages easier to comprehend, and partly to dispel the illusion that there is more precision to the numbers generated by GIS; i.e., the 70,000 acres is every bit as accurate as the 68,862 acre figure, and easier to understand.”

Try it on your land

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Clip to come: Bob on how the pieces fit together

Placeholder for a short video.

The 19 types of evidence

The 1999 thesis enumerates nineteen types of information (p. 18):

“At least 19 different types of information were used for research purposes during the course of this thesis. Specific sources of information are listed in the reference section and representative findings are described in text and/or displayed as tables, figures, and/or maps in the body of this document. Types of information used in this research included: 1) aerial photographs, 2) archives (including libraries), 3) artifacts, 4) drawings, 5) fossils, 6) journals (including diaries and correspondence), 7) land surveys, 8) living memory (source of oral traditions, oral histories, interviews, and consultations), 9) maps, 10) newspapers, 11) photographs (other than aerial photographs), 12) pollens, 13) popular literature, 14) satellite imagery, 15) scientific literature, 16) timber cruises, 17) tree rings, 18) vegetation patterns, and 19) video (and film).”

Here they are grouped in four classes, each with an AI-written gloss, a passage from pp. 19-26 (or Appendix G), and repositories.

Written records

Documentary sources, from the original land surveys and timber cruises to archives, correspondence, the press and the scientific literature.

Images

Visual records at every scale, from hand drawings and ground photographs to air photos, satellite imagery and moving pictures.

The land itself

Physical evidence in place: artifacts, fossils, pollen, tree rings and persistent vegetation patterns.

Living memory

Oral traditions, oral histories, interviews and consultations.

His 1999 ratings of the 19 types (Table 7)

“They are assigned an arbitrary “Use” rating by the author regarding their general availability and durability (Poor, Fair, or Good).”

USE: stability and availability of the source (Poor, Fair, Good). AFC/P and AOH/P: actual/potential value for documenting forest cover patterns and oral history, on a 0-3 scale (0 not useful, 3 very useful). Ratings are the author's, for Soap Creek Valley.

Table 7, p. 58 of the 1999 thesis (his names and ratings, for Soap Creek Valley)
Type (as named in Table 7)UseForest cover, actual/potentialOral history, actual/potential
1) aerial photographsGOOD3/31/3
2) archivesFAIR2/32/3
3) artifactsFAIR1/21/2
4) drawingsFAIR1/21/2
5) fossilsPOOR1/21/1
6) journalsFAIR1/21/2
7) land surveysGOOD3/31/2
8) living memoryFAIR3/33/3
9) mapsGOOD3/33/3
10) newspapersGOOD1/12/2
11) photographsFAIR3/33/3
12) pollensPOOR1/21/1
13) popular literatureFAIR1/11/1
14) satellite imageryFAIR1/20/2
15) scientific researchGOOD3/32/2
16) timber cruisesFAIR3/31/2
17) tree ringsGOOD2/31/2
18) vegetation patternsGOOD3/31/2
19) video and filmPOOR1/30/3

“Thus, videos were used for only a fraction of their potential value (1/3 for forest cover patterns and 0/3 for oral histories), while photographs were used to their full potential (or nearly so): 3/3 for both forest cover patterns and for oral histories.”

The four documents

  1. Using Oral Histories to Document Changing Forest Cover Patterns: Soap Creek Valley, Oregon, 1500-1999 (1999), by Bob Zybach. Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies thesis, Oregon State University.

    Master’s thesis (Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies), Oregon State University, presented March 5, 1999. Oral histories, and the 19 types of information (p. 18).

  2. The Great Fires: Indian Burning and Catastrophic Forest Fire Patterns of the Oregon Coast Range, 1491-1951 (2003), by Bob Zybach. PhD dissertation in Environmental Sciences, Oregon State University.

    PhD dissertation, Oregon State University, presented July 8, 2003. General Land Office surveys, aerial photographs and landscape patterns.

  3. Coquelle Trails: Early Historical Roads and Trails of Ancestral Coquille Indian Lands, 1826 - 1875. Volume I, Part 1: Making the Trail Maps (2013), by Bob Zybach and Don Ivy. A Coquille Indian Tribe Cultural Geography Project report, by Bob Zybach and Don Ivy. PDF of Part 1.

    By Bob Zybach and Don Ivy, January 4, 2013. Quotations and page numbers on this site follow the PDF of Part 1; the web version linked here words some passages differently.

  4. Tiller Pre-Contact Reference Condition Study: Final Report (2011), by Bob Zybach. Final report, February 14, 2011.

    Final report dated February 14, 2011. Its title page says it was prepared for Resource Management Services of Roseburg, Oregon. Appendix B is a separate paper by forester Mike Dubrasich and is not quoted here.

Historical research, not title research. For ownership questions, talk to a title company or an attorney.

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