The performance history piece continued for most of an hour around the Port Henry band shell built where the railroad yard once rumbled.

Pontius staged the production as promenade theater, where the audience follows actors around.

For a brief minute, long-gone miners seemed to smile through time.

The fifth grade, lined up along the Iron Center's railroad cars set on a short length of historic track, shuffled in their old shoes and took a bow. No one said a word for a while, as students handed out chunks of iron ore that sparkled in the evening sun.

Joan Daby, town historian and curator of the Iron Center nearby, said the program gave young people a chance to explore their own past.

"I thought it was done very nicely. The kids really got into it, and history will be more memorable to them because they acted it out."

The program concluded two months that Ploufe's class spent studying the history of the mines.

"If it's forgotten, it's lost," Daby said. "All that history, which is so very important, would be gone. In later years, if they want to delve into it more, at least they'll have the basics. We need people to keep the stories alive."

"I love watching them get committed to what's going on," Pontius said. "They realize they're storytellers and what they say has meaning."

Pontius researched, wrote and produced programs in six schools this year -- Keene, Elizabethtown, Saranac Lake, Westport, Keeseville and Moriah -- on town-specific projects reaching some 700 school children.

The Adirondack History Center Museum produced the shows with a two-year federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Pontius said.

The History Center is now offering professional development opportunities to teachers to explore local history and get ready for the Quadricentennial Celebration in 2009.

kdedam@pressrepublican.com