The National Trails Office – Intermountain Region of the National Park Service will fund two projects at the Stone Fort Museum during the coming year focused on el Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail.
The Camino Real Demonstration Garden and Wayside Exhibit grant will support interpretation of the native and introduced plants used by travelers along the Camino Real and integrated into their East Texas communities. Installed on the grounds in front of the Museum, the demonstration garden will enrich the visitors’ experience and provide students and scholars alike a living laboratory on domestic and native vegetation associated with the trail.
The demonstration garden is an ongoing project of the Museum and the Center for Regional Heritage Research. In 2008-2009, the Center provided support for research resulting in a plant database. Developed by Arika Kulhavy while working as a graduate research assistant at the Museum, the database will serve as supporting documentation for garden planning and will be available to the public in an online format. When complete, the garden will further the Museum's mission of teaching the early history of the Spanish Borderland region and complement environmental education programs offered by SFA Gardens and the historic landscape visible at sites such as Durst-Taylor home in Nacogdoches.
A separate grant, the Camino Real Education Workshop Series, will produce two regional education workshops in Texas and Louisiana for those interested in becoming more involved in trail projects. The 2011 workshop series is an expansion of the Museum’s 2009 Heritage Education Project funded by the NPS that trained eighty heritage resource managers, educators and volunteers during two weekend workshops. Participants have the opportunity to learn from experienced ‘rut nuts’ and travel as a group to a remnant of the trail.
For more information on either of these projects, contact museum staff by phone: (936) 468-2408, or by E-mail: stonefort@sfasu.edu.