The Lewis and Clark Trail's Shared Management: The Superintendent's 2023 Letter

Mark Weekley, superintendent of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, opened the trail's 2023 annual report with a letter to its partners. He called it another strong year, both along the trail and at the National Park Service's trail headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, and pointed to the projects carried out with the trail's many partners.

A different kind of park

Most places in the National Park System are owned and managed directly by the federal government. National historic trails like this one are not. Managing the Lewis and Clark trail, Weekley wrote, rests not on federal ownership but on shared responsibility: many people and organisations working together to protect, promote and study the Lewis and Clark Expedition and its route.

That "management team" is a wide network — people in local, state and federal government, nonprofit organisations, Tribes and many others — and the trail's staff count themselves part of it, alongside the Park Service's own volunteers and partners.

The letter

Weekley thanked the trail's partners for protecting it, researching it, teaching about it, and giving their time, talents and money year after year. In 2023 he was in his 15th year as superintendent. Once the trail and the expedition's stories catch the imagination, he wrote, people want more and cannot let go, and he counted himself lucky to work every day with the partners and the staff in Omaha. He closed looking forward to what comes next, and invited readers to explore the rest of the annual report.

Sources

• Mark Weekley, superintendent, "Looking Back on 2023 from the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Superintendent," in Lewis and Clark Trail Annual Report 2023, National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/looking-back-on-2023-from-lewis-and-clark-national-historic-trail-superintendent.htm
• The full report: https://www.nps.gov/lecl/learn/news/2023-annual-report.htm