Adrienne Clune imagined life on the late 19th-century Montana frontier as romantic, quiet and slow-paced. She thought of her grandmother's uncle, P.J. Brophy, who left Ireland in 1876 and a few years later started a grocery store in Butte, Mont. Sure, life on the frontier was tough for him in the beginning, but he became quite successful and well-liked in the booming mining town. When she applied last year to participate in the new PBS reality series "Frontier House," Clune thought that five months on a re-created 1883 homestead would allow her plenty of time for quilting, sewing and bonding with her husband and three children.

Once she began her life as a "homesteader's wife," however, those romantic ideas were plowed under by reality. Milking cows, churning butter, cooking three meals a day on a wood stove, laundering clothes with a washboard—the time-consuming, monotonous chores of everyday survival didn't leave much time for quilting or anything else. "It was an endless work day, from sunup to sundown," Clune says after returning to life as a stay-at-home mom in her comfortable California home. "For women, particularly mothers, [frontier life] was brutally tough, full of hardship. There was so little time to do the things I'd like to do."

Clune was one of 13 people from three families who accepted the "Frontier House" challenge: Take over a 160-acre homestead and live a historically accurate 1883 lifestyle from June to October 2001. All the while, a television crew from Thirteen/WNET New York caught every move on tape, including "video diaries" that captured each participant's individual experience along the way. There was no "tribal council" where participants voted each other off the show; instead, the three families occasionally came together to share common problems and solutions, such as raising livestock. No one won $1 million at the end; the only prize for participants was the richness of the experience.

"I'll never be the same person I was before," says Karen Glenn, another "Frontier House" participant. "I have a deeper understanding of what's essential: the family." Glenn, a school nurse from Tennessee, decided to try out for the show as a tribute to her father, who grew up in a log cabin in the Appalachian Mountains of Maryland and died several years ago at the age of 81. "I wanted my children to see and feel and understand their grandparents' and great-grandparents' lives," she says.

So how did they do it? The producers couldn't just plop three 21st-century families into the 1883 Montana wilderness and say "Go for it!" Instead, they took the approach of a previous popular PBS series, "The 1900 House," in which a modern British family spent three months living as Victorians. That show relied on a number of experts to re-create the life of a middle-class family in 1900 London as accurately as possible. The "Frontier House" producers hired a domestic skills consultant, an animal handler, two historical consultants and a building specialist, all with expertise on the time period and region of 1880s Montana.

Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith, the show's historical consultants, wondered how accurate the experience would end up being for participants. After meeting with the production crew, however, they realized "they were serious," Smith says. "This was not 'Survivor.'" Peavy and Smith, who co-authored several history books on women and the West, came up with probable "scenarios" for why each family might have come to the frontier in 1883. They also decided what personal items the families would have brought in a trunk, which the family members got to open at the end of a "boot camp" of training for frontier life. During the two-week period, the families learned how to build a cabin, start a fire in a wood stove, milk a cow, plow a field and many other skills they would need on their own homesteads.

In the end, all three families survived. They took on the challenge of their ancestors and succeeded. You can witness their pain and progress when the show begins airing in late April, and get an idea of what your pioneer relatives might have gone through. "Frontier House" consists of six one-hour episodes, with two episodes airing per night on April 29, 30 and May 1, from 9 to 11 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings). For lots of background information and behind-the-scenes scoop, check out the Web site companion to the show at www.pbs.org/wnet/frontierhouse. "You'll feel dirty and tired, you'll feel their triumphs and joy," Smith says. "You'll feel the homesteader experience, which you've read about but never seen actually experienced."

Susan Wenner is managing editor of Family Tree Magazine.