Digging the West at UM with anthropologist Kelly Dixon

Digging the West at UM with anthropologist Kelly Dixon

University of Montana anthropologist Kelly Dixon has spent her career chasing the true American West.
Her work in lost boomtowns and rugged landscapes has revealed a past that John Wayne’s Hollywood wouldn’t recognize. Excavations and hard forensic evidence constantly surprise her and defy conventional expectations.
Take, for instance, the digs she did with colleagues at a Donner [...]

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Digging the West at UM with anthropologist Kelly Dixon

University of Montana anthropologist Kelly Dixon has spent her career chasing the true American West.

Her work in lost boomtowns and rugged landscapes has revealed a past that John Wayne’s Hollywood wouldn’t recognize. Excavations and hard forensic evidence constantly surprise her and defy conventional expectations.

Take, for instance, the digs she did with colleagues at a Donner Party campsite in California. According to western legend, settlers trapped there on a snowy pass in 1846 were forced to eat one another. But when Dixon and her cohorts located an old fire hearth, they found 16,000 tiny bone fragments and were only able to identify some of those as animals, including remains from horses, cows, deer and a dog. They were covered with cut marks, revealing a story of starving people trying to access every last bit of nutrition. Is the cannibalism a myth or does other evidence wait to be found among other bones in the collection? Dixon’s doctoral work in Virginia City, Nev., also unearthed an elegant black-owned saloon that served the best cuts of meat in town. DNA found on a pipe belonged to a woman. Surely Hollywood needs some new material.

Closer to home, Dixon and colleagues helped find the possible hilltop grave of Lolo, a mountain man for whom a nearby Montana town and pass are named. They also unearthed old garden terraces near Plains — believed to be created by Chinese railroad workers — as well as the frontier mining ghost town of Coloma. Dixon and her fellows have involved UM students on each project.

In Coloma, they found multi-room homes with ample evidence of women and families. She calls it the anti-Wild West town.

Dixon’s work inspired an award-winning UM television commercial. In it she says, “Through the evidence we uncover, we are able to piece together the mysteries of long ago. Discovery is the journey; enlightenment is the reward.”