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Steven Branting | Not Your Father's History Lesson: Idaho Students Solve a Necrogeographic Mystery | The Western Historical Quarterly, 38.2 | The History Cooperative
38.2  
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Summer, 2007
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Not Your Father's History Lesson: Idaho Students Solve a Necrogeographic Mystery

STEVEN BRANTING



A town's history is not frozen in its architecture or catalogued by its censuses. It lies buried in its cemeteries, where neither façade nor lineage is important and all are equal. In Lewiston, Idaho, students married traditional historical research with the latest remote sensing and geographic technologies to locate, map, and memorize the sites of pioneer burials.

La historia del pueblo no se hiela en su arquitectura ni en la categorización hecha por sus censos. Se entierra en los cemeteries, donde ni la fachada ni el linaje se figuran y donde todos se igualan. En Lewiston, Idaho, los estudiantes juntaron la búsqueda tradicional de información histórica y la tecnologia geográfica para localizer, trazar y commemorar a los cities de los entierros pioneros.


      "BE CAREFUL GOING IN SEARCH OF ADVENTURE," wrote William Least Heat Moon. "It's ridiculously easy to find."1 On a pleasant day in October 2001, a group of Lewiston, Idaho, 7th graders took what they and I thought to be a small step toward understanding the role of geographic information systems (GIS) in historical solution-finding. We used the global positioning system (GPS) to map the distribution of reburials from the city's old 5th Street Cemetery to its newly-platted Normal Hill Cemetery in the 1890s. Little did we know that the survey would become an adventure of discovery, both for us and our community, and lead to unexpected experiences. "Things just kind of kept snowballing," remembers Nate Ebel, one of the students. "I know none of us thought it would go on when it started that day."2 But that is getting a little ahead of the story. 1
      As a fellow of the Lewis & Clark Rediscovery Project (LCRP), a national Challenge Grant seeking to infuse technology into classrooms along the route of the Corps of Discovery, I was exploring the intricacies of ArcView, Environmental Systems Research Institute's (ESRI's) popular GIS software, and wanted to share my new skills with junior high school students. ESRI describes ArcView as "GIS for everyone. With it, you can manipulate and display ArcInfo files, modify data, add your own information, and even add geographic features and customizations. Basically, ArcView GIS enables geographic exploration through the design of maps, charts, and tables in response to an endless array of 'What's it like?' and 'What if?' questions."3 2
      I successfully proposed a semester-length course to Jenifer High School's administration. Focusing on a comprehensive curriculum that investigated ArcView's architecture and consistently stressing problem-solving, the class easily rivaled any university's first-year GIS syllabus. However, I knew the students needed meaningful field experience and was aware of the story of the old cemetery and the exhumations that had taken place. What better opportunity to use GPS and ArcView's capability to download waypoints and add them to existing maps? . . .
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