Welcome to the Fort Tejon Student Living History Program (SLHP)! The first thing we would like to say is that it is you, the teachers and parents, who make the SLHP work. Your enthusiasm, creative interest, and pre-site planning will fire the students' interest and give them the unforgettable learning experience that the Fort Tejon SLHP can provide. Park staff is here to help you plan for your on-site program. Planning a big trip like this may seem a bit daunting, but take heart, read on and have fun with it all. It will work out fine!

"Living History Program," as the name implies, is an actual living, overnight experience for children that takes place at any cultural, historic, prehistoric, or natural site where the interaction and interdependency of people and their environment are represented. It relies heavily on pre-site explorations and preparations, role-playing, and problem solving. This program was developed from the National Park Service's Environmental Living Program.

During the SLHP, schoolchildren take on the characters and activities of the past in order to "live history." By acting like a character from the past and doing the things that character would have done, children become more acutely aware of the historic environment as well as their own. School children are introduced to Fort Tejon as "new recruits" in the U.S. Army. They will work together as Army recruits from the mid-nineteenth century. One lesson that they will learn, is that they must work together in order to succeed, just as pioneer peoples did in order to survive. In both environments, they can and will be forced to solve many problems. The emphasis of the program is on self-learning and working together as a team.

Through this experience, children become aware of, and curious about, the physical, natural, and historic aspects of the park site as well as their relationship to the site and its history. By role playing and hands-on historical activities, kids learn that the characters in history books are people just like them, and they can gain a personal relationship to history. The SLHP is an experience that the kids will remember throughout their lives.