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Update from the field:
Simon Shaw, Series Producer
For 6 months an amazing operation has gathered pace.
More than 5,000 families responded to our challenge. To
track our ideal candidates, we crossed thousands of miles
to interview over forty families in twenty-plus States. Historians across
America have locked horns to engage in the kind of
detail most academics would faint at. Could we really
find out if corsets were worn on frontier washdays?
What did settlers do without detergents? Could horses
be found today to haul wagons across terrifying
terrain? And perhaps the most baffling of all our
mysteries -- would modern day people be able to survive
such an experience?
As always, we discover there's never one neat answer.
The truth is there was no "typical" homesteading
encounter. Rather, the answers are complex to
disentangle but the rewards from the digging doubly
fascinating.
As the livestock selected to accompany our dozen
participants wait nervously in their corral up at
Virginia City, here I am in Bozeman settling down for
the night in a hotel
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"The three main
ingredients of our endeavor: jeopardy, uncertainty, and
incredible promise for a shared fascinating journey.
Who knows where it will lead."
-- Simon Shaw, Series Producer
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full of equally anxious families. Like those who first made their journey out west, they
must be wondering what lies ahead, what will my land
be like? Will my cabin be large enough? Can I survive
a six-month encounter with Dad snoring just four
inches from me?
This is the day we start to seek answers to those and
a few thousand other essentials we hope to discover
about life in the raw 1880's style.
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