Swan Valley Students Contribute to Next Exit History App

SWAN VALLEY – Fifth through eighth-grade students from Swan Valley School, Salmon Prairie School, and area home schools came together at the Upper Swan Valley Historical Society (USVHS) Museum Monday, Oct. 9 to help create footage for the Next Exit History app. The free app, begun as a graduate student project at the University of West Florida, Pensacola, now lists more than 60,000 sites worldwide.

The goal of the app is to acquaint people with historical sites. Footage such as that supplied by the Swan Valley students is meant to enrich the experience of visiting the actual exhibits. An additional advantage, according to USVHS Program Director Anne Dahl, is that it allows the museum to meet the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act by providing program accessibility to visitors who are physically unable to enter the museum's outbuildings. The main museum has a monitor on which visitors can see more about the insides of the cabins and other less accessible structures.

Dahl also said, "We're engaging the students because we want it [the museum's exhibits] to be more interesting for young people."

Dahl enlisted Swan Valley resident Alan Newell to help with the student project. Newell, who described himself as a professional historian, recently retired from the Missoula company, Historical Research Associates. Already involved with the Next Exit History app, Newell had previously posted six Condon and two Seeley Lake locations on the app site. He plans to eventually have 25-30 Condon/Seeley Lake historical sites accessible via the app.

In his orientation to the students, Newell directed them to first acquaint themselves with the artifacts in their selected building. They were then to devise a method of conveying some of that information on a short video. Since the Next Exit History app includes scavenger hunts and trivia questions for some of the sites, the students also were encouraged to find one item in the building and formulate a question about it. Each group was given a camera to take a picture of their chosen object.

The group in the Smith Creek Schoolhouse enjoyed sitting in the old school desks and reading from some of the books used by students in pioneer days. One student said he wished his classroom had desks that opened like the old ones did, so he could store his books and other items inside. For their videotaping, the group decided to act out a typical day in the lives of the former students attending the school. Most fascinating to the modern students was the old galvanized steel bucket filled each day by a student sent to the nearby creek. The classroom had two dippers for drinking the water – one for girls and the other for boys.

The group in the Whalen Cabin decided to focus on the kitchen area of the home. In their video, individual students described the wood-burning stove and the cupboard, which had a special compartment for storing flour. One student discussed how the wood had to be split to an exact size to fit into the small rectangular door opening on the stove. The hand-flipped waffle iron and the handle for lifting the stove-hole covers were also focuses of interest.

The group in the Swan River Tavern presented their video with one student acting as a newscaster interviewing two Swan Valley School students who had written reports on the old tavern. Using wall photos as props, the students he interviewed talked about the former owners and about the young children who used to sing and play instruments, including an accordion, to entertain the bar customers. The modern students found it particularly fascinating that one of the young musicians was Mike Holmes, a well-known Condon resident who currently owns the Hungry Bear Steak House. One student even had her own stories to add – or rather stories told her by her grandfather – about how the tavern acquired the name Liquid Louie's and Louie's reputation of being able to slide a drink across the bar, always reaching the exact person it was meant for and never once spilling the contents.

The last group reported on the Trapper Cabin. Two members of the group pretended to be the cabin's residents and two others played the part of young men thinking about becoming trappers and seeking advice from the old-timers. The cabin residents explained about the three different types of traps they used. They did such a good sell job that the young men left eager to start doing their own trapping.

After videotaping all four groups, Newell said, "This is even better than I thought it would be. I think the kids really learned some things and had a lot of fun doing it."

Newell already has three videos uploaded onto the site. They can be viewed on mobile phones or other internet accessible devices that carry the Next Exit History app. While the app is free to users, partnering organizations that wish to have their historical site included are charged a subscription fee. The Preserve Missoula County History Grant, donations and other grants funded the USVHS digital project.