Silver Mining n the West: Conflict and Community on the Frontier

FAIN: BH-50121-06

University of Idaho (Moscow, ID 83844-9803)
Katherine G. Aiken (Project Director: August 2005 to April 2007)

Two one-week workshops for 100 school teachers on the history of the mining industry in the American West.

Wallace, Idaho will be the site for a teacher workshop that focuses on the role of mining in American History. Every building in the Wallace downtown area is on the National Register of Historic Places and the community is the center for the Coeur d’Alene Mining district, an area responsible for a large portion of the United States’ heavy metal production throughout the twentieth century. The workshop will emphasize the considerable impact of mining on the industrialization process; gender and ethnicity tensions in mining communities; organized labor as a force in history; the relationship of extractive industries to the development of the American West; and the interfaces between western history and United States history in general.