Fairview High sophomore Henry Larson is planning to enter his fourth National History Day competition, working on a documentary with a group about Native American cultural genocide in the 1850s.
"History is a passion for me," he said.
He went to the national competition in eighth grade with a project on written communication during the Civil War, uncovering the little known fact that the U.S. Army briefly employed a "camel corps."
To choose a topic, Henry said, he looks for subjects that haven't received much attention and have connections to Colorado so he can add interviews and local cinematography to his project.
"If you dig enough, there's always something interesting," he said.
This year, 16 area schools are participating in National History Day competitions. Most are Boulder Valley schools, along with four St. Vrain Valley schools plus the private Dawson School.
Students spend about three months researching and creating their project, choosing from five formats: paper, website, documentary film, museum exhibit or performance.
To get students started, the Boulder Public Library in November hosted a research open house with personalized help from regional historians and librarians, CU and Denver University mentors and community experts.
Students first present their projects at school competitions. Finalists go on to a regional Boulder Valley competition, with top projects moving to a state competition. Each state sends the top two entries in every category to the national competition, set for June at the University of Maryland in College Park.
Last school year, Fairview junior Maddie Gallop made it to nationals with her project partner, Grace Bryant, for a project on a travel guide for African Americans, "The Negro Motorist Green Book," during the Jim Crow era. They created an exhibit using the stops showing safe places to stay and eat.
"It was interesting to learn more about a topic we don't learn about in school," Maddie said.
For this year, 120 sophomores in Fairview's pre-IB, advanced U.S. history classes are all required to produce a history day project around this year's "conflict and compromise" theme.
"We want them to do the research aspect of National History Day, to take a deep dive into a topic," said Fairview history teacher Sean Costello. "It's really impressive to see what the kids come up with."
Topics include Radium Girls, female factory workers who were poisoned as they painted watch dials with luminous radium paint; the Klu Klux Klan and Ben Stapleton's influence in Colorado; and the 1991 Kurdish uprising in Iraq.
Sophomore Sophie Boileau is researching the deportation of the French Acadians from Nova Scotia, Canada, in colonial times. Most ended up settling in Louisiana, becoming the present day Cajuns.
"They rebuilt themselves," she said.
As someone with Acadian ancestry, Sophie said, she has the advantage of her grandmother's stories to help with her research. But primary and secondary sources are limited online, so she's been ordering books through the library.
Though it's not the easiest topic to research, she said, it's worth it to learn more about her history.
"It's a really interesting story," she said.
At Broomfield Heights Middle School, about half the eighth-graders, or about 130 students, are participating. Teacher Paula Coffman brought National History Day to the school about five years ago.
"It's absolutely amazing," she said. "They get to pick their own interest area. They learn research skills, critical thinking skills and time management skills. It's the largest project they've done. I see tremendous growth of skills."
Alina Kingsbury, who owns a pinball machine and helped her dad rebuild others, is researching the pinball ban of 1942, when the game was classified as gambling.
"I thought that was insane," she said. "I wanted something nobody else has done. It's fun to be an expert on something that nobody else knows about."
Greta Stoltenberg is studying the history of Caroline Nichols Churchill, a writer and newspaper editor who was involved with Colorado's women's suffrage movement.
"I'm a really big feminist, and I loved her story," Greta said. "She had this exciting life."
Jackson Bahl, a self-described computer geek, plans to create a website on his topic, the Manhattan Project and its effect on history. His interest in the project came from his grandfather, who worked on nuclear weapons.
"Everybody thinks National History Day is scary, but it's not," Jackson said. "I thought it was scary. I wasn't that interested in history when I started, but now I feel really inspired to learn more. I turned into the kid who works on it all the time. I want it to be good."