But trail exploration is now offered year-round through the new Oregon Trail History and Education Center set within the park. Yet Smith says that at just an hour from Boise and Twin Falls, the Three Island Crossing site is more accessible to many Idahoans eager to learn more about their 19 th -century forebears. Island Crossing History and Education Center sits near the north banks of the Snake, not far from where the emigrants crossed. Inside its walls of desert antique sandstone, the center starts with a look at the Native American peoples who lived in the area thousands of years before the emigrants arrived. Other displays view the trail from the emigrants perspective.
Visitors have plenty of hands-on opportunities to learn how pioneers prepared for their journeys.
The meeting of two cultures the tribes and the emigrants is sensitively explored throughout the center. The Shoshones and Bannock had used the crossing area as a salmon fishery for centuries. Therefore, they knew the river well, and some were hired to guide emigrants past its deep holes and swift channels. Relations weren t always peaceful between the parties, and exhibits also tell how the tide of westward migration increased tensions and sometimes led to violence along the route. But there are also signs that wounds have healed, and that each side has learned much from the other.