Interviewees were chosen by the Anaconda-Deer Lodge Historic Resources Board, which evaluated potential subjects based on criteria that included occupation, community involvement, knowledge of Anaconda’s history, and a willingness to participate. Interviews were typically conducted inside participants’ homes, although a number of the interviews took place in a basement office generously supplied by the Hearst Free Library in Anaconda. Oral history interviews are structured as a chronological life history, with detours along the way to explore topics of interest to the narrator. Most of the conversations touch on topics including ancestry, immigration, religion, education, occupation, family, and Anaconda’s economic evolution. Participants are also asked to reflect on 250 years of the United States, to acknowledge the source of the project’s primary funding, the Montana 250th Commission.

Why is it important to conduct interviews of this kind? History is made up of a mass of recollections, some conflicting, which are embodied by the people who lived it. History is not made solely by kings, emperors, and nations; it is lived and forged by ordinary people. Take the time to listen to the particularities of any individual life story, and a multitude of stories emerge.