By Rachel Hergett EBS COLUMNIST
Let’s start with a timeline. The American Civil War started in 1861. The next year, gold was found on Grasshopper Creek, spurring the first gold rush in what would become Montana. In 1863, while the war soldiered on, gold was discovered in Alder Gulch near what is now Virginia City. The town came after, built around the gold rush. And all this happened before Montana became an official territory in 1864.
I fully admit that I looked up each of those years. I have never been good at memorizing dates. Shout out to my Bozeman High School world history teacher, Tami Phillippi whose tales of the antics of European monarchs led me to ace the AP test—even if I still can’t remember the year the Magna Carta was sealed. History, I learned from Ms. Phillippi, is most exciting when it tells a story. More recently, I learned those stories are better with food.
Let me explain. I got an email in June from Extreme History Project executive director Crystal Alegria inviting me to join a stop on the organization’s A Taste of History summer series. “The Extreme History Project began as a means of making the humanities more fun, interesting and accessible to the general public,” the website states, and my experience has proven. Extreme History often focuses on women, minorities and marginalized communities in its walking tours and exhibits at its home in a former brothel at 234 E. Mendenhall in Bozeman.
Alegria and Montana State University history professor Jennifer Hill created A Taste of History last year to expand on the senses used and create a more immersive storytelling experience, one that according to a pamphlet given out at the first event, would increase “understanding and appreciation of our community’s historical resources.”
The first offering was “From Virginia to Versailles, which focused on the Black community in Virginia City. It was presented by Alegria and Hill, with an assist from Pat Jacobs, an architect specializing in historic preservation.
“Through stories of labor, hospitality and resilience, participants will discover how African diasporic food traditions found expression in one of Montana’s most iconic frontier towns and in the meals served in local eating establishments,” the website promised.
I found a foodie friend to tag along and ventured to Virginia City on a mostly sunny Saturday. Stories were told introducing the town and its residents that would shape the experience.
Our first taste was a “Spice Trade Lemonade,” infused with ginger, cinnamon, anise, cloves, black and green pepper, chili pepper and smoked paprika. Dried spices, we learn, were easily transportable, even before the railroads made it to Montana Territory in 1881.
“They were making magic as much as they were able to,” Hill said.
The arrival of the railroads changed the availability of certain goods in towns such as Virginia City. What would have been shipped by boat up the Missouri to Fort Benton and then on supply wagons to various communities suddenly had a much quicker journey.
There are other historians in the group, and over lemonade we naturally discuss lemons. Before they were widely cultivated in California in the 1890s, lemons were shipped from Sicily, I learn. A root vegetable tart, layered with carrots and beets and a third root vegetable that was supposed to be parsnips (but I believe was replaced due to modern supply issues) was served at Sarah Bickford’s farmhouse. The dish showcased how the entrepreneurial woman and owner of the Virginia City Water Company “fed Virginia City residents from her truck garden year-round, even in the depths of Montana winters. It seems easier to connect with Bickford as I’m in her home, eating foods that could have been made in her kitchen well over a hundred years ago.
“We want to have this be a lived experience for you, to feel it in your body,” Hill said.
Even Alegria seems moved, tearing up as she talks about Bickford’s life in the house and community.
Next was a mac and cheese in the style of chef James Hemings, who was born into slavery, purchased by Thomas Jefferson, and became the first American chef to train in France. It was served with collard greens, properly cooked in lard until they were melt-in-your mouth tender. We went on another walkabout to nearby buildings owned by Bickford and returned to close the day with homemade ice cream. It was custard based and served with a topping of canned pineapple, cans being easy to transport. I left with a greater knowledge of the actual lives of people in that community. I was full of both food and new ways to look at history.
In July, Extreme History’s program at Elkhorn ghost town, “Go West, Go Hungry,” looked at how immigrants adapted their culinary traditions to new environments, limited resources and unfamiliar ingredients in a Montana mining town.
A Taste of History will visit the state capital on Saturday, Aug. 8. “Fine Dining and Hard Labor,” a program set in the original governor’s mansion carriage house in Helena, explores how food reflected and reinforced class status in the West. The program on Friday, Aug. 21, “Food for the Soul,” looks at the role of food in sacred rites and religious traditions, and features exclusive tours of the Butte-Silver Bow Archives and the historic St. Lawrence O’Toole Church.
More information on these events can be found on the Extreme History Project’s website.
Each stand-alone, day-long program runs from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and includes tastes of historic dishes eaten by people in the area. Admission is $75 for members and $80 for nonmembers, and attendees are responsible for arranging their own transportation to each location. We were also asked to pack a lunch in case the tastes were not enough sustenance. My packed lunch remained untouched and I even scored some leftover root vegetable tart to take home.
I enjoy learning bits of history, connecting story to place. But history has never quite come this alive for me. That said, I have been plied with ice cream.
Rachel Hergett is a foodie and cook from Montana. She is arts editor emeritus at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and has written for publications such as Food Network Magazine and Montana Quarterly. Rachel is also the host of the Magic Monday Show on KGLT-FM and teaches at Montana State University.
