The Evolution of the Sierra Speaker Series, with Heidi Doyle

This is a 17-minute listen.

Following the grand opening of the Donner Memorial State Park Visitor Center in 2015, the Sierra Speaker Series was launched in 2016 as a training program for volunteer docents. Over the years, it has grown to a larger, more formal format, allowing subject matter experts to hold conversations with the community about sensitive topics covering the rich natural and cultural history of the Sierra Nevada region.

We hear from Heidi Doyle, who represented Sierra State Parks Foundation for insight into the evolution of the Sierra Speaker Series, and what we can learn from this development.

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Full Transcript:

Sierra State Parks Foundation, Host: [00:00:00] Welcome listeners. We're recording from Truckee, California today. I'm your host Denise with the Sierra State Parks Foundation. Joining us today is Heidi Doyle, former Executive Director of the Sierra State Parks Foundation, and currently Senior Consultant for The Foundation. Heidi, you were the Executive Director starting in 2012, but you've stepped down from the position last year in 2024. So you've had a couple of years to watch the evolution of the Sierra Speaker Series happen. Before we dive into your thoughts. Would you mind just sharing your background with the listeners?

Heidi Doyle: I was fortunate to have a 50 year career in Public Lands starting in 1974, while I was a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and hired as one of the first women firefighters on the Los Padres National Forest as a result of a court order by the Supreme Court to bring women [00:01:00] into the field of the Forest Service. Throughout college, I continued to work for the Forest Service. I had stints with the National Park Service, Ventura County Parks, and in 1981, landed my dream full-time job with California State Parks as a State Park Ranger.

I stayed with State Parks full-time for several years. My husband who worked for the military had opportunity to live overseas in West Germany at the time, so I transferred to a part-time seasonal job at Lake Tahoe, and that's what brought me to Lake Tahoe. With one child in 1989, and I thought it would be a two year hiatus for my full-time career, but it ended up being a permanent move to Lake Tahoe and two children later, when I had three children, I ended up moving as a State Park Ranger full-time to Lake Tahoe. I worked for State Parks as a Park Ranger and [00:02:00] then was promoted to be the Interpretive Specialist for the parks at Lake Tahoe and Truckee, and that's how I started my involvement with the Donner Visitor Center as being part of the team for the development of the exhibitory, the educational component. Then I was given an opportunity to leave State Parks to head the Sierra State Parks Foundation. I saw that as an opportunity for what I believe should be a strong public private partnership to promote and move forward our public lands mission. And I was very privileged to stay with that position for just about 13 years.

Sierra State Parks Foundation: So I was just thinking that, having 12, 13 year career with the Parks Foundation that you've got to share in a lot of its successes. One that comes to mind is the Donner Memorial Visitor Center that had its [00:03:00] grand opening in 2015 and this Sierra Speaker Series began shortly after.

In 2016 with the goal to connect folks to the rich, cultural and natural history of the area. And over the years we've seen topics range from musicians performing their originals about the Donner Party to mountain lions and prominent local historical figures to even the Chinese population that was essential to the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad.

So listeners, we'll be continuing the conversation with Heidi, who has been one of the key people to bring this vision to fruition. Heidi, can you take us back to the early days, how this idea came about and who was involved in that process?

Heidi Doyle: We were real excited about the final opening of the Donner Visitor Center in 2015.

The building took, believe it or not, 20 years from concept [00:04:00] to the grand opening to happen, and the money for the building itself came from federal transportation funds, and the exhibits were funded by bond money from California State Parks or the people of California through California State Parks. When the building was completed, there wasn't a good sync between the building opening itself and the exhibits being ready. So the building was empty for a year, which gave The Foundation time to raise the funds to hire the very first coordinator for the new Visitor Center because there were no public funds available to run or maintain the Visitor Center.

So The Foundation, and I was instrumental with that, worked very hard to raise year one funds for the grand opening that happened in 2015. When that happened, we were real excited about the response we were getting and how we were able to enhance the story. [00:05:00] So the old Visitor Center was called the Immigrant Trail Museum, so focused on the immigrant experience in westward expansion.

It did have some very small exhibits that included the Washoe and the Chinese involvement in building the railroads and westward expansion. But it didn't tell the story very well. We were really excited about this new Visitor Center opening whose main theme is crossing the Sierra Divide.

So it talks about all peoples that have crossed or lived into the Sierra Divide from the earliest Washoe to the present day folks who venture on Highway 80 on stormy days to get to Truckee. So we were real excited about this expansion of the interpretive theme and thinking about ways of how we can enhance those stories on top of that, because it took so long for the Visitor Center to happen. It was very contentious with the locals. Why do we need to spend money on a new Visitor Center? The [00:06:00] old one was just fine. The location was very contentious, so there, there were a lot of ill feelings within the community towards State Parks and the Visitor Center in particular. So I was very interested of how can we bring people, especially our local population, back to Donna Memorial State Park back to the feeling that our State Parks belong to our entire community and as well as enhance the interpretive themes that were happening.

So we came up with a concept of a speaker series that would do just that, and we were able to get a permit from California State Parks to make these events free by waiving the parking fee. So The Foundation pays a fee to the California State Parks that covers the operating costs for that particular event.

And so we started bringing local historians and there's a plethora of [00:07:00] them. And and people were coming in for no charge to share the history. Layered on top of that, we had started a docent program. So the docent program was supported by the Sierra State Parks Foundation, and I was very involved with bringing in and training that first class of docents under the leadership of Nikki Combs and Don Schmidt, who was a a retired ranger and very involved with the Donner Visitor Center as well. And so we wanted to use the Sierra Speaker Series as a training mode for our newly established docent program to enhance their education as well.

Sierra State Parks Foundation: Hearing you talk about the beginnings of this speaker series has been so fascinating. Also, just hearing the perspective from Jeremy Lin and Elizabeth Gardner. It just really goes to show how important it is to capture these stories that make up the fabric of our community, just as it's important to stay connected to the areas history through [00:08:00] engaging in conversational speaker series. I was wondering if you could talk more on the importance of having this stage for these presenters to come and talk about the local, natural and cultural history of the area. Why is this important? Why does it matter?

Heidi Doyle: It matters our public lands in Donner in particular because it's at the entry point of California.

It's the first public land that they come to when they cross the state lines, that they can come and visit and learn about what we are. So it's the gateway to California. I think it's in. Important to share these stories and amplify the stories of the larger populations and also emphasize that the story isn't the past.

The story continues. So to bring in members of the Washoe Tribe and to see how excited they are to come to this [00:09:00] popular public place to share, not their past story in particular, but their present day story; to bring in members of the Chinese American Railroad Society from Sacramento to enable them to share their past story, but more important, their present story as they're bringing forward; to share the story of the building of railroad and transportation as we connect transportation from past years to what's happening now. I think that is so critical, and it's exciting to me that not only are we bringing the stories to a new audience, but actually the fact that people have now a platform to share their own backgrounds and their own stories and this platform wasn't always available. And that we through the speaker series have opened our arm [00:10:00] arms to the these lenses of our past to help us have clarity as we move forward in the future.

The most popular ones are historical nature. We're very blessed to be living in the middle of the Sierra Nevada and there are a lot of resources to learn about our natural history, but there aren't a lot of places to learn about our cultural history.

And one thing that's real important is you can't have a cultural history without the natural history story being told which is real important because people came to California for the natural resources. But it was that cultural element that opened up the natural resources. It started with gold, it continued with the trees for helping with the mining efforts.

Now it continues with the golden state and the landmass that we have and the wonderful climate of California. And I think it also tells the story of [00:11:00] California and the different stories of Californians are very open to diversity and and bringing in stories. And also I think The Foundation is a critical organization to tell this story of how ugly our history has been sometimes and how we can learn from this. Because oftentimes we tell stories through rose colored glasses, and it's been a privilege to tell the story through original lenses so we can learn from our past because we , as a people, have done things that haven't always been positive to others or to the land.

The Sierra Speaker Series is a safe place to have these conversations. Even from the very beginning, the Sierra Speaker Series is not a one-way "I'm gonna tell you how it is", it's a conversation between people so we can bring that forward and we've been very fortunate to have conversations from so many [00:12:00] different people, so many different backgrounds, and bring in speakers that want to engage in conversation.

Sierra State Parks Foundation: I just want to highlight what you said about how these stories are still continuing. Just like how the Sierra Speaker Series story is still forming and changing. You've touched on it a little bit, but what are your thoughts on the evolution of this series over the years? How have you really seen it grown, and what direction would you like the series to move in?

Heidi Doyle: The series started as an initiative of the Sierra State Parks Foundation with cooperation with State Parks. Now it's really involved with a full partnership with California State Parks, and now we've had a third leg of having it take off with leadership from outside from a volunteer base.

So it's very strong. I'm so excited how how this partnership has grown and how the ownership of the series has grown. We are the [00:13:00] sponsors, but it's the ownership coming from our State Park partners at Donner, coming from volunteers who really know how to engage very interesting professionals from outsider community and how to raise the funds in order to bring people from outside the area.

But still we haven't forgotten our local roots who, very proud of the fact that the late Truckee Historic Society is still very much involved and attends our events, that the Truckee Railroad Museum Society is still very involved.

Money's always a key of bringing in this, and so we've been getting great community support from the town of Truckee as well now to help us raise funds as well as private donations that we receive from the donations that people give when they come in.

And having this pot of funds to expand our honorarium amount has enabled us to bring [00:14:00] in speakers from the Central Valley, from Los Angeles and and also partners with local hotels so we can house people. It has expanded our reach outside our local community and I find that people now come to listen regularly from Reno and from the Sacramento area. So people will drive up to two hours to come to the series.

We developed it to be a pre dinner event, if you will. The Visitor Center closes at five o'clock, so that's when it converts from a public Visitor Center to a private event at 5 0 1.

People can come in and check out the Visitor Center very quickly get themselves settled. The Foundation offers some from snacks and perhaps a glass of wine, so it becomes the social interaction 'cause we wanna lay the foundation for a conversation to happen. Then at five 30 we have the program for just one hour and it's done right at dinner [00:15:00] time. So we hope that people then will take this opportunity to make speakers evening, a date night to go with come with their friends and then expand extend the evening in into dinner hour. So we purposely set it for this time and period to make it a conversation. And this routine has really become popular and I'm very excited about how it's moving forward and growing from the very simple me asking my friends, will you come and share the latest book you've written or we'd pick out, somebody locally from an interest to now we're getting published authors, PhD researchers. And also able to add honorariums to, for example, members of the Washoe Tribe who take the long drive all the way from Gardnerville to share their lens with us.

Sierra State Parks Foundation: The series not only has grown itself, but the voices, the parties involved in the planning [00:16:00] of the series has grown as well. And shout out to our partners, California State Parks and the library system of Nevada County for helping us elevate our game. So Heidi, what talk are you looking forward to this year?

Heidi Doyle: Oh my gosh, you're putting me on the spot because I haven't seen the complete, I've been looking at the e-blast coming in. I love the Sierra Speaker Series. I like the format. I like that it's an hour and 15 minutes of my evening in a really interesting atmosphere. I think one on wolves is coming up, which is very interesting.

It's hard for me to answer this one because I haven't really paid too much of attention. But I know I always put it on my calendar to attend when I'm in town. You put me on the spot with that one because I dunno what they're!

Sierra State Parks Foundation: Sorry to do that, but, you can find the whole calendar on our [00:17:00] website, SierraStateParks.org/events.

Heidi Doyle: I have to apologize. That's part of being retired: not paying too much attention sometimes.

Sierra State Parks Foundation: You're so good. Heidi, thank you so much for your time today.

Heidi Doyle: You're welcome, Denise. Thank you.