2012 Nevada City Lantern Tour Schedule

I would like to thank Dan Thyer for providing the 2012 schedule for the Nevada City Lantern tours.  I am hoping that I can make it to one of them this summer. I think this would be a great way to experience gold rush night life at its best.    Nevada City and nearby Virginia City are high on my list of places to experience Montana history.

Lantern Tours of Nevada City are held once a month during the summer season. The dates for 2012 are June 23, July 21, Aug. 18,and Sept. 1. All tours start at 9pm from the Nevada City Music Hall, and take about 90 minutes. It is a chance to see what early Montana was like at night in a rip roaring gold mining camp.

Recommended Reading: I do: a cultural history of Montana weddings

Since there are two Montana weddings in the book that I currently writing, I was pleased to discover a new book on the topic at my local library.   I do : a cultural history of Montana weddings / by Kohl, Martha.  I found it to be well written.  It provided a look at weddings throughout Montana history, giving details of lavish weddings of some of Montana's more prosperous families as well as depression era weddings and everything in between.  I was hoping to find out a little more about Montana's marriage laws, and this book did touch on the subject briefly. Since I do not wish to include material that has been covered recently in other books, I was glad to find that the one of the weddings I am mentioning in my book is only mentioned briefly in this book and the other one is not mentioned at all.

Ms. Kohl is employed at the Montana Historical Society.

Lewis and Clark on the Map

In my last post, I mentioned a book that I was reading, The fate of the corps : what became of the Lewis and Clark explorers after the expedition, and it started me thinking about how often the names Lewis and Clark show up on Montana maps.  There is Lewis and Clark County, Lewis and Clark Caverns, and Lewis and Clark National Forest.  There is a Lewis and Clark Elementary School in Missoula Montana and all sorts of motels and other businesses with a Lewis and Clark tie-in.  I grew up on Lewis Street in Livingston which runs parallel to Clark Street. There are several other Lewis or Clark streets and Avenues across Montana.

Lewis and Clark are not the only members of the Expedition immortalized on the map.  The Shields River and Pryor Mountains are two examples that come to mind. In the little town of Wilsall, in the northern part of Park County, a town with only a few streets, there are Lewis Street, Clark Street, Ordway Street and Shannon Street, all names of expedition members. Then there all of the locations named for Sacajawea and her son. There are Sacajawea schools, streets, parks and peaks.  Pompey's Pillar, named for Sacajawea's son, is one of the most famous spots along the Lewis and Clark Trail.    Even York, who traveled with the expedition as a slave owned by William Clark, and who recieved no pay for his part of the expedition, is remembered on Montana landmarks. York's Islands in Broadwater County is the location of a state fishing access.   There is a town in Lewis and Clark county called York, but I am not sure if it was named for the slave without checking it out further.