Saturday, March 15, 2014

Field Trip!

It was a wonderful day for Northwest History today, as I got to do a field trip with some of my public history students. This quarter we are creating a smartphone driving tour of Idaho's Silver Valley, an area with a rich history. So today we piled into a couple of cars and took a road trip.

We visited the Wallace District Mining Museum, the Northern Pacific Depot Museum, Cataldo Mission (and the adjacent museum), and the ghost town of Burke. The highlight was the Mining Museum, where director Jim McReynolds rolled out the red carpet and gave us an inside view of running a small museum. Shauna Hillman opened the Depot Museum specially for us and gave us a wonderful tour. Some of the interesting features of Burke were hidden under the snow but we still enjoyed gawking at the mining ruins and comparing historic photographs to what remained. On the way back to Spokane we did a quick visit to Cataldo Mission, including a lightning visit to the Sacred Encounters exhibit. A few photos:

Silver Valley Field Trip

I really should do this sort of thing more often. Not because it is a great educational experience for my students (though it is!) but because I enjoy it so. In what other profession do you get to spend your days with bright, enthusiastic young people, discussing your favorite topic? I do love this job.

1 comment:

D. Babb said...

My great-grandparents met in Burke, where he was working as a miner and she worked as a cook. They married in Wallace in 1901 and then settled to farm outside Genesee, ID. I hope to make that same field trip someday.