Ambitious effort aims for forest museum

An ambitious effort to bring a national museum on the Forest Service and conservation history to Missoula has been quietly gaining momentum, marching toward a groundbreaking target next summer.

It’s been a long march, going back to the founding of an organization called the National Museum of Forest Service History in 1988.

The group, made up mostly of retired Forest Service employees in the Missoula area, realized that there was a glaring lack of any effort, anywhere in the country, to gather and maintain more than 100 years of the agency’s history.

“They saw that this history would be lost,” said Liz Madison, a senior adviser to the organization’s current board.

Few know it, but 40,000 historic artifacts and records have been gathered and are now stored at Fort Missoula under the care of the National Museum of Forest History. Some items are on loan and limited access to the treasure trove has been available to researchers and family members of past Forest Service employees, Madison said.

The 30,000-square-foot structure that is planned on a 36-acre Forest Service parcel near the Missoula airport is intended to bring to the public the history of the Forest Service and its conservation partners.

“There’s a story that needs to be told,” Madison said. “There’s not one museum in the country that tells it.”

Since 1988, the mission for the museum has evolved to account for the Forest Service’s many partners, such as state land management agencies and conservation groups.

“We’re interpreting the history of the Forest Service, but to do that story we also have to tell the story of our cooperators,” said Dave Stack, a retired Missoula District ranger who now serves as the organization’s executive director.

For that reason, the museum will be called the National Conservation Legacy and Education Center.

With a projected cost of $12.7 million, it is an ambitious project with some unusual, eye-catching design features.

The two-level building will be topped with a tower resembling a fire lookout, and the entire structure will be built under two internationally recognized green building programs that promote energy efficiency.

The building will feature wood materials from across the nation. The lobby’s post-and-beam structure will feature 24 different tree species that will be part of the museum’s educational program on forest management across the country.

“We want this building to really be an educational exhibit to demonstrate how forest products are used in green building,” Stack said. “I think that’s kind of different and it was a way to involve people from other parts of the country and it will be educational, too.”

The building will have a gift shop, a theater and a main exhibit area for its historic collection, but much of the collection will be available online.

Miller said an outreach effort is under way with school districts across Western Montana and Idaho, including schools in the Flathead Valley, to establish the museum as a destination for conservation education as well as a resource for classroom instruction.

“It’s going to be a big resource for our kids,” she said.

The effort to establish a museum has crossed a series of important milestones over the last 22 years. First, it required the official support of the Forest Service.

A collection and archives program was started in 1990, and by 1994, the 36-acre Forest Service campus was acquired.

A fundraising campaign was launched in 2005. Backed solely by volunteers, it was slow going at first. By 2007, about $3 million in cash and in-kind contributions had been raised for a project that’s expected to cost nearly $13 million.

“The method and means for raising that amount of money was difficult to achieve with a small group that wasn’t experienced with fundraising,” Stack said. “The board decided we sort of hit a wall with our fundraising abilities.”

Miller and others with professional fundraising experience were brought into the fold in 2007, and soon after the organization started working with an architecture firm on design plans.

The fundraising campaign has gained momentum ever since.

Because of its expanded reach toward the Forest Service’s cooperating partners — the mining, skiiing and timber industries and conservation and wildlife groups, to name a few — the museum’s support has grown. There are now 31 people spearheading fundraising as regional directors or as members of the board of directors.

Lynn Biddison, a retired Forest Service regional director and a part-time Polson resident, got involved about five years ago and now is in charge of pulling together support for the museum’s fire and aviation program.

“I’m third-generation Forest Service, and there had been no effort that I was aware of to do anything to preserve the history and tell the history of the Forest Service,” Biddison said, explaining his motives for getting involved.

Biddison said he and others with the organization were assigned to different fundraising areas.

“One of the first things they did was make up a list of organizations to contact. I came up with a list of almost 90,” he said.

Miller said the museum’s broad appeal has helped with fundraising efforts, even in a down economy.

“I think what’s really bringing people together in support of the center is that there are so many partners who helped create this story,” she said. “They understand the importance of these lands and that conservation history and they want that story to be told.”

The effort has attracted $3.3 million, and with pending funding proposals, the campaign is expected to reach $9.6 million this year.

“The next two months are big months because of these pending proposals,” Miller said. “I am optimistic that we will fully fund the National Conservation Legacy and Education Center and by 2012 and 2013, we will have the doors open.”

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com.