Two one-week Landmarks workshops for eighty school teachers on gold, silver, and copper mining in the American West, with visits to Virginia City, Helena, and Butte, Montana.

Using Montana as a case study, the workshop, The Richest Hills: Mining in the Far West, 1865-1920, will utilize three significant landmark sites--Virginia City, Helena, and Butte, Montana--to explore placer gold mining, silver mining, and industrial copper mining, as they relate to the issues of racial and cultural diversity in the West, the built environment and its relationship to the industry of mining, the relationship between capital and labor in the mining industry, and finally the importance of mining to the industrialization of America.

Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers that connect the study of mines and mining in Montana to broad patterns of U.S. history.

This workshop addresses the contributions of western mining to the social and economic history of the United States through study of the different types of mining in four Montana towns. Lectures and discussions address such topics as the technological processes of mining; capital and labor in the mining industry; the architecture and commercial life of Bannack, Virginia City, Helena, and Butte; African-American, Jewish, and Chinese communities; and relations with Native Americans in the region. Project co-directors Kirby Lambert (Montana Historical Society [MHS]) and Paula Petrik (history, George Mason University) are joined by Robert Swartout (history, Carroll College), Ken Egan (literature, Humanities Montana), Fredric Quivik (industrial heritage and archaeology, Michigan Technological University), Nicholas Vrooman (Native American history, University of Montana), Andrea Stierle (biochemistry, Montana State University [MSU]), Mary Murphy (history, MSU), educator and Crow tribe member Shayne Doyle (Native American studies, MSU), independent filmmaker Pamela Roberts, and other local experts. Readings include selections from Montana: A History of Two Centuries (Michael Malone, et al.) and Montana: Stories of the Land (Krys Holmes), as well as scholarly chapters and articles, several by workshop faculty Petrik, Murphy, and Vrooman. The participants also use primary sources from MHS, including documents, maps, and photographs, as they develop teaching units.