How would you teach about livestock and the Open Range?

Last December, I wrote about having students design a brochure for (and then pretend to take) a time travel vacation. The idea--which I found on Russell Tarr's amazing site--is to have students consider multiple viewpoints, first by selling the positives of a certain time or place in the brochure. And then, in a complaint letter about the vacation from hell, highlighting all the problems.

Since then, a teacher planning a new course in Montana history asked me to suggest activities to accompany Chapter 8, "Livestock and the Open Range, 1850-1887," of our textbook, Montana: Stories of the Land. My first thought was that this would be a perfect time period with which try out Russell Tarr's time-travel idea.

Before writing their student recruitment brochure, I'd have students start their investigation by analyzing such Charlie Russell paintings as Laugh Kills Lonesome, and Bronc to Breakfast,  using Visual Thinking Strategies. After listening to a cowboy song like "My Home's in Montana," I'd ask them to "write their way in" by spending 3 minutes answering this question in writing, without regard to grammar, spelling or punctuation: "What do they think of when they think about cowboys and the Old West?"

After a discussion about about the appeal of the cowboy myth, I'd have them work in small groups to research life on the open range and to create the two written products:

1. a brochure selling a vacation on the cattle frontier.
2. a complaint letter to the tour company, detailing all the ways the fantasy didn't match the reality.

Here are some sources students might want to use to do research for both the brochure and the complaint letter:

• Montana: Stories of the Land Chapter 8 - Livestock and the Open Range, 1850-1887 
• Excerpts from "Cow Tales," a reminiscence by Harry Rutter, which we've selected for one of the chapter 8 Learning from Historical Document units
• photographs of L. A. Huffman and Evelyn Cameron, who documented life on the open range
• The short essays about ranching history and culture on the Grant Kohrs NHL website (the easiest way to find them is to go to the site map and scroll down until you reach the links listed under the head "history and culture.")
• Excerpts from Mary Alderson's A Bride Goes West and Teddy Blue Abbott's We Pointed Them North, two published reminiscences about life on the cattle frontier.

After students complete their brochures but before they write their complaint letters, you might want to help them switch gears with another VTS activity, this time of Charlie Russell's Last of the 5000 or Waiting for Chinook. 

This activity is a more research intensive (and possibly more fun) version of the one of the critical thinking questions listed at the end of chapter 8: “Look back at the Russell paintings that illustrate chapter (could expand to additional cowboy paintings.) Do you think they offer a realistic picture of life on the open range?"

How do you teach about Montana and the Open Range? According to a survey we did several years ago, it is one of many teachers' favorite chapters to teach, so I'm sure there are many great ideas and activities out there. Please send me yours, so I can share it out.