Past Projects
The Copperway Guide to Butte-Anaconda History and Culture
“The Copperway”-- the name given the nation’s largest National Historic Landmark district that links their communities – will be a visitor “portal” or entrance/exit point to the Rural Treaures Guide. “These two heritage tourism projects dovetail perfectly and are timed to capture the interest of tourists expected to attend the Vernacular Architecture Forum Conference in 2009 and the National Folk Festival to be held in Butte from 2008 to 2010,” says MPA Director, Chere Jiusto.
The historic resources of Butte-Anaconda and southwestern Montana are deeply historic, reflecting a colorful past that ranges from copper barons and labor unions, to mining camps and vigilantes, to ranching and cattle raising, to the ethnic tapestry of young communities on the western frontier. These are the themes to be drawn together in a brochure guide to these great mining cities. The Butte-Anaconda Historic District is the country’s largest NHL in numbers of historic resources; as noted in the 2006 NHL document, the resources reflect the copper mining and smelting industry like none other on the continent. From the 1870s through the mid 1930s, the labor and copper history of Butte and Anaconda shaped the future of Montana and our nation.
ROSEBUD BATTLEFIELD STATE PARK PROTECTION PLAN
MPA received funding from the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP) IN 2005 to create a broad and effective preservation plan to protect Rosebud Battlefield, a landscape that is highly significant to the history of our nation and eminently threatened.
Working in close cooperation with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, leaders of tribes who share this history, and other interested parties, MPA produced a preservation plan for Rosebud Battlefield State Park and the surrounding lands that identifies threats, lays out clear strategies for limiting the impacts of development, and plans for the long-term stewardship of the park’s important historic and prehistoric cultural resources. The plan also provides a comprehensive historical summary of the landscape that has not been compiled elsewhere.
Work on this exciting project was complete in July 2007 and will eventually form the core of a comprehensive plan by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks for the park. We hope the plan will then guide concerted efforts to reduce threats, to foster understanding of the battlefield and its history, and to promote its preservation.
In 2005 the Montana Preservation Alliance received grant funds from the National Park Service to create a digital archive of the rich cultural landscape that is the Tongue River Valley. The goal of the project was to demonstrate the national, state and local significance of the layers of prehistory and history located in one small corner of southeastern Montana.
MPA Executive Director, Chere Jiusto and Senior Historian, Jim Jenks compiled primary and secondary research, recorded prehistoric and historic sites in the Tongue River drainage, assigned GIS waypoints to new sites, conducted oral interviews with local residents, and supervised film crews in the making of a one-hour documentary on the ranching community of Birney. The colorful and engaging film brings out the closely knit family histories of the town residents, but also tells the story of the land and the water and how it shaped the inhabitants of this small valley. In addition to the documentary, the CD-ROM archive also contains a full report on the history of the Tongue River Valey, an interactive map that includes significant pre-historic and historic sites with clickable links to historical information, site plans and photos.
The Tongue River Digital Archive project builds upon years of inquiry into the area’s people, heritage resources and the land. In the end, the digital archive approach provides a model for comprehensive planning and resource protection. We've shown how cultural landscapes can be documented and preserved by researching broad contexts, incorporating oral traditions of local people, seeking to understand the values that define place on a local level, and compiling it in the most up-to-date digital format. This is a timely project in a landscape where fragile historic resources are imminently at risk by the rush of energy development.
