Workshop+Blog

=**Follow along as I blog about my time exploring the important mining centers of Montana, both then and now.**= Then we explored the Anselmo mine. There are many different people who work together at a mine! Take a look at these pictures of Anselmo. After lunch at Montana Tech (Montana School of Mines) watched a documentary film, Butte, America. A documentary film is a movie that teaches you about a topic that is real. This documentary film showed the history of mining and the city of Butte. The director of the movie (the person who makes the movie) shared her story of meeting and talking to the miners. Last we went to Anaconda to explore the smelters. Smelters turn rock into metals that people use to make objects, from bikes to iPods to cars and buildings. Check out the process of making metal from rocks here and the way the process can damage the environment. || First we visited the Berkeley Pit. The Berkeley Pit is a huge hole in the ground. Humans dug this hole as they mined the mountain for copper. When they stopped mining, the water flooded the mined pit and made a lake. But you would never want to swim in this water. It is too polluted for humans or animals. Check out more on the Berkeley Pit, the pollution mining can cause, and how we try to clean up our mess when we pollute the environment as we mine. || Mining Montana homepage
 * Date || Location || Blog Entry ||
 * **July 11** || **Virginia City** ||Today we explored one of the first big gold mining area. Sometimes it is called "fourteen mile city.". It was called this because the small mining towns, or camps, were up and down the Alder Gulch stream.  People were hunt for gold, small gold dust.  We toured Virginia City, walking it's wood planked sidewalks, or boardwalks.  We went inside old buildings with old products for sale.  ||
 * **July 11** || **Nevada City** ||  ||
 * **July 12** || **Butte** ||What a day! We learned so much about mining today, from the role immigrants played in the mining camps to exploring the World Museum of Mining .  I was impressed to learn how strong the Chinese influence was here in Butte, where the Chinese provided the town with restaurants, doctors, laundries, and so on.  Sadly they were not allowed to work in the mines.  We were able to meet some miners who worked up to 5,000 feet underground, who shared their stories with us.  That will be a memorable event. Thank you Ed Drabant. I feel so much honor for them due to the long years of extremely hard work they did for all of us.  Everyone needs to thank a miner if they any metals!  I bet you do...look around you.   ||
 * **July 13** || **Butte** ||A busy day in Butte.  We started at the Butte-Silver Bow Archives .  The archives are a place where communities store photographs and other materials to remember the history of the community. It is like a time capsule or even a museum of a place.
 * **July 14** || **Helena** || Every day has seen rain. Today has been no different. Woke up to a thunderstorm with hail. We saw bright lightening, loud thunder, and hail (little balls of ice) coming out of the sky fast!
 * **July 15** || **Helena** ||  ||