Road to Bannack

PAL arrives at Bannack

By: Anthony Vasquez

    The Theme class from the Project for Alternative Learning stepped off the bus into the chilled winds of Bannack Montana. It was a three hour bus ride from Helena, stopping only once at a rest stop along the way. The class rushing out from their cramped seats, stretching their legs and talking. Kathy Collins a teacher for the school was greeted by  a tour guide from the ghost town, his name was John. Renee and Jeri, two other teachers were on the side of the bus where the cargo is held, passing out lunches to hungry teens, grabbing their sacks  and running off into directions for their own privacy and break from the long trip. The students approach a picnic area over a bridge that crosses a creek that runs a little outside the old ghost town. It was an enchanted area with golden leafed trees concealing the kids while they ate their lunches and socialized.

After a quick lunch the class was soon separated into two groups which went with two different tour guides. The first group went with the tour guide John, they explored the mining mills in the ghost town. He explained that gold was discovered in 1862 and how they used cyanide to dissolve the gold out of ores (solid rock). In 1862 Bannack was the first big gold rush in Montana, soon followed by Virginia City in 1863 and then Helena in 1864. Placer mining is when gold is separated completely from the ore which they used cyanide, as where load mining is when the miners have to crush the rocks to get the gold.  John, the tour guide, continued to explain the ethics of the old fashioned miners and ended with the note of the year the last resident had left the now abandoned city. The resident left in 1975.

      After the first tour, the first group met up with the second tour guide by the name of Clint. Clint had long dark hair covered by a wildlife hat. He had a beard the hung down to his chest matching his hair. He talked with enthusiasm as he showed the group how to pan for gold in a big white tub filled with water. For our gold panning experience, there were about five tubs with benches on the sides of them. There was a rock pile where the students would shovel on to a filter down onto their pans, to get the silt and dirt. Pointing the ridges on the pan away from us, the class filtered out the material that weighs less then gold and garnets. Students exclaiming out for Clint to make sure that their discoveries were indeed gold, some being fooled by Mica, and some students making an exciting discovery. In July of 1862 gold was discovered in Bannack. 80,000 people moved in Montana within those three years, many of those people in search for gold.

After the gold panning session, the group then went out in search of information throughout the ghost town, going through the old hotel, school house, and old Skinners saloon, all the way up a hill to the cemetery and throughout houses. After a quick scavenger hunt ended by the sound of the old school house bell, the group then met up to discuss answers and information. The group then had a follow up history lesson with their first tour guide, John. He talked about Montana’s first governor Sydney Edgerton to the date Montana was declared a new territory in 1864. John went on to tell that Montana was a Spanish word that meant mountains and how there were only 3,000 people in Bannack once but only 2,700 of them were males. At three-thirty, the students of PAL high school boarded the bus for their long ride home.  As the kids said their goodbyes and thank yous to the guides, the PAL theme class were ready for the long day to end.