Mill City, Oregon, rarely appears as a major point on maps. Incorporated in 1941, the town remains a small logging outpost of just under 2,000 residents, nestled an hour south of Portland along the North Santiam River.

The town still hosts two lumber mills along the river, both surrounded by an evergreen forest of Douglas fir, juniper, and maple trees divided into checkerboarded parcels owned by the state, U.S. Forest Service (USFS), and the Weyerhaeuser Company—one of the largest timber companies in North America. Gabriel Amadeus has made this small community his home, tending a cabin chock-full of maps of varying vintages that depict more than 100 years of changes at the western edge of the North American continent. The maps that blanket the walls of his office, and the excess that live in cardboard tubes filling the corners of the room, tell the story of land in the West through trails, roads, settlements, and geomorphology. It’s a story deeply intertwined with logging, conservation, and recreation—much the same as Amadeus’ and that of his colossal, ambitious, and now, nearly complete Orogenesis trail project.