The Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives recently received a National Endowment for the Humanities Common Heritage Grant in the amount of $12,000.

With this funding, the Archives, in partnership with the Montana Preservation Alliance, will conduct outreach to the Hispanic, Jewish, Finnish and German communities in Butte to record and digitize stories and images of cultural artifacts, family documents, artwork, as well as heritage properties, institutions and traditions that have sustained them. The project will begin in the spring of 2019 and continue through June 2020.

The research and preservation workshops conducted with each group will come together in an exhibit highlighting each community, and will provide a better understanding and appreciation for their ethnic role in Butte’s history. Migration journeys will be shared as well as social and ethnic traditions, roles in the labor force, settlement geography, and business patterns. When the project is complete, all digitized materials gathered will be housed permanently at the Archives, and made available for public use and research.

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the NEH supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation.