Karen L. Johnson is Director of the Bigelow House Museum in Olympia, Washington. She received a B.S. in Landscape Architecture from Washington State University in 1978. She is a contributor to and past editor of the Lewis County Historian, the quarterly publication of the Lewis County Museum. Her personal interest in history focuses on early travel in the Northwest: she is part of a volunteer team currently completing a documentary film on the history of the Cowlitz Trail, the northernmost extension of the Oregon Trail; she is spearheading an effort to place stone markers on the Oregon Trail in Washington and Idaho, thus completing pioneer Ezra Meeker’s project from 100 years ago; and she is researching the history of stagecoaches in southwest Washington.