Historical Museum at Fort Missoula

Open October 2022 through August 2023

Clothing is an inherent part of the human experience. Inspired by a recent collections internship project, Undressing History celebrated the stories that our clothes tell. Garments on display were pulled from the museum’s large collection of textiles to serve as a fashionable backdrop for visitors who want to put themselves in the shoes of those who came before us.

Initially developed to protect our bodies from the elements, clothing has been used to express a person’s character, position, and status of life in cultures across the world. While not everyone is interested in the ebbs and flows of couture and high fashion, people still choose to wear clothing that means something to them or expresses their personalities. Just as the clothes we wear in the present reflect who we are now, clothing from our past reflects where we have been. These pieces of fabric hold memory of the people who wore them, the places they were worn, and the events that they were worn for.

Open October 2020 through January 2023

Looking Like the Enemy explored the climate of racism and anti-Japanese bigotry in the United States, especially on the West Coast, that resulted in the internment of the Issei (first-generation Japanese immigrants) and the incarceration of their children, the Nisei, who were American citizens. Using photographs from HMFM’s permanent collection, the exhibit told the stories of the men imprisoned at Fort Missoula. Through artifacts, images, and artworks, the exhibit traced the trajectories of these men and their families, from building a life in the United States to wrongful imprisonment during wartime to the way those experiences impacted later generations of Japanese Americans.

We thank the Oregon Historical Society for loaning us artifacts to help flesh out the story of the Yasui family. This exhibit also features artworks loaned to us by Don Mundt, Kathy Herlihy-Paoli, and the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation.

Open September through December 2022

HMFM has partnered with the Missoula Symphony to bring you a series of exhibits exploring the history of the symphony and the role music has played in Missoula’s history. For the final installation of this year-long exhibit series, HMFM rang in the winter holidays with an exploration and celebration of the Missoula Symphony’s annual Holiday Pops concert.

Today the holiday season in Missoula kicks off with the consistently sold-out Holiday Pops concert put on by the Missoula Symphony Orchestra and Chorale. But how did this holiday tradition come to fruition? The exhibit explored the history of this popular community event and how, from its first concert in 1999, this performance has continued to grow and take its place in the hearts of many Missoulians.

This exhibit featured objects loaned to HMFM by Dean Peterson.

Open Summer 2020 through Fall 2022

Missoula has been home to Forest Service Rangers since the founding of the United States Forest Service 1905. The disastrous 1910 fire season, during which more than 3 million acres of forest in Montana and Idaho burned down, pushed the Forest Service to improve its lines of communication in any way possible. Fire Call explored those improvements, tracing the development of back country communication from early telephone lines strung from tree to tree to wireless telephones to, finally, reliable wireless radios.

This exhibit was the work of many hands. In particular, we thank HMFM friend Steve Bixby, who partnered with us every step of the way. We are grateful for his knowledge, enthusiasm, and carpentry skills, without which this exhibit could not have existed. Alongside artifacts from our permanent collection, the exhibit also featured artifacts loaned to us from the National Museum of Forest Service History, Steve Bixby, the Region One Historic Preservation Team, Libby Langston, and Jack Puckett.

Open June through September 2022

HMFM has partnered with the Missoula Symphony to bring you a series of exhibits exploring the history of the symphony and the role music has played in Missoula’s history. For the second installation of this year-long exhibit series, HMFM opened our gallery up to students from our local schools for a Kids as Curators exhibit.

Very few things are universal, but most people connect to music in some way. This spring, students from around the Missoula area were invited to take over the museum gallery and share something about Missoula music history with visitors. Staff from the Historical Museum visited classrooms, hosted field trips, and brainstormed with the students about what music means to their lives and how Missoulians would have experienced music over the past 150 years. Students from Hellgate Elementary, Big Sky High School, and our own Jr. Docent Corps explored a wide variety of topics, including the Missoula City Band, the Griz Marching Band, the 25th Infantry Band, the history of live music at the Wilma, and so much more.

Check out an Exclusive Exhibit Extra! As part of her research for this exhibit, Jr. Docent Dani interviewed Missoula City Band Director Gary Gillett. Watch the entire interview:

See images from the exhibit:

Open February through May 2022

HMFM partnered with the Missoula Symphony to bring you a series of exhibits exploring the history of the symphony and the role music has played in Missoula’s history. The first installation of this three-part exhibit series was inspired by the archival collection and artifacts that were donated to the museum by the Symphony in 2019. From performance photographs and programs to documents and letters gathered by past symphony Executive Directors and Music Directors to long-time music director Joseph Henry’s final performance tuxedo, these collections materials combined with testimonials and recollections from dedicated symphony patrons and musicians allowed visitors to dive into the rich history of this 67-year-old organization.

The museum would like to thank the Missoula Symphony Orchestra for entrusting us with their collection and for helping create these exhibits to bring the collection to life. This exhibit also featured objects loaned to HMFM by Dean Peterson.

Open September through October 2021

HMFM welcomed local artist Mary Beth Wilhelm to our Orientation Gallery. Mary Beth came to HMFM in the spring of 2019 as part of the Open AIR artist in residence program. Throughout her residency she captured visions of HMFM’s historic structures, creating many of these pieces while on the museum grounds. Through over paintings and process sketches, this exhibit took visitors on a walk around the grounds, and brought a fresh perspective to the buildings that have become so familiar to the HMFM community.

History Through an Artist’s Eye not only featured the completed pieces, but pulled back the curtain to show Mary Beth’s entire artistic process. As a plein air artist, Mary Beth began each of her pieces as a sketch drawn on the museum grounds. She used not only the physical structures as references but incorporated the lighting, weather, and even wild animals present during her sketching sessions. As a result, each piece is intimately tied to the day and time it was created. Alongside the finished pieces, the exhibit featured many of these initial sketches, which include details such as notes about the direction of the light and the time of day.

Open November 2020 through August 2021

HMFM and the Montana Woman Suffrage Centennial Committee joined forces to commemorate the 100th anniversary of woman suffrage in the United States. Montana Votes! takes a deep dive into Montana’s election history. In the exhibit, discover the forces that have shaped our state’s politics, from efforts by the Anaconda Copper Company to silence voters to the decades-long fight for Indigenous suffrage and voter equality.

The Montana Woman Suffrage Centennial Committee also presents Leading the Way: Montana Woman Suffrage and the Struggle for Equal Citizenship, which explores Montana’s path to allowing women to vote.

This exhibit has been the work of many people. In particular, we would like to thank:

Browman Fellow Brock Flynn, for doing the research for this exhibit,
Diane Sands, for the loan of artifacts celebrating woman suffrage and female politicians in Montana,
The Montana Woman Suffrage Centennial Committee, for the loan of panels from their exhibit Leading the Way: Montana Woman Suffrage and the Struggle for Equal Citizenship.

Open September 2019 through April 2020

“Would that he had died on the battlefield”

Discover the life of Thomas Francis Meagher, acting territorial governor of Montana from December of 1866 to July of 1867, through 24 drawings by Missoula artist Stephen Glueckert. These drawings depict the twists and turns of Meagher’s life, as he was blown by the winds of war and fate to the four corners of the earth:

Born in Waterford City, Ireland, Meagher lived a life of privilege thanks to his father’s business success. Fiercely proud of his birthplace, Meagher was a leader in the failed Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848. For this he was imprisoned by the English government in Van Diemen’s land – present day Tasmania. After escaping imprisonment and being exiled from his homeland, he found himself in the United States where he quickly began winning the trust of the Irish diaspora in New York and the friendship of President Abraham Lincoln. During the American Civil War, Meagher led New York’s Fighting 69th Irish Brigade. After the war, Meagher became the acting governor of the Montana Territory, a position he held for only a few months before falling to his death into the Missouri River in 1867.

HMFM is glad to have worked closely with Stephen Glueckert to premier this exhibit of his original artwork.

Open February 2019 through July 2020

No Enemy Movement Observed tells the story of Leon Howard, a twenty-year-old man removed from his middle-class California setting, trained to be a “basically qualified Marine,” and placed in combat half a world away. Howard spent 13 months in Vietnam, nearly all of that time on the front lines. When he returned home, he found himself alienated from his former peers and unable to express or process the horrors he had seen. Eventually, Howard moved to Frenchtown and worked in the logging industry, preferring the high adrenaline of felling trees to the stress of crowded places.

Howard’s experiences are told through photos he took during his tour of duty and artifacts he brought back home when it ended. The exhibit was created in partnership with Howard, and with guidance from the Missoula Vet Center. No Enemy Movement Observed was awarded a Leadership in History Award of Excellence in 2020 by the American Association for State and Local History.

Open February through July 2020

Leiser’s Footsteps uncovers the history of Missoula’s original Jewish citizens and their contribution to Missoula’s growth and culture.

A few of the movers and shakers of Missoula Jewish history included in the exhibit:

Herman Kohn – saddle maker, jeweler, councilman who helped build Missoula’s downtown commercial district, and a friend of Salish elder Big Sam
Daniel E. Bandmann – world renown stage actor, horticulturalist, and rancher
Jacob Leiser – tailor store owner, entrepreneur, and the first Jew to settle in Missoula
Leslie Fiedler – literary critic, writer, intelligence officer, and college lecturer

Leiser’s Footsteps is a traveling exhibit created by Bear Bones Historians. Explore more of Missoula’s Jewish history and heritage at the Bear Bones Historians’ website.

Open November 2019 through January 2020

“There is a great promise in a light that shines bright in the darkness, great spiritual warmth in its radiance on a cold December night.”
–Merry Christmas! Celebrating America’s Greatest Holiday

This winter, HMFM has partnered with museum friend Don Spritzer to create a festive display of holiday lights to lift our spirits during the long, dark days of winter. Discover the history of holiday lights, from simple candles to modern LEDs. Spritzer’s collection of vintage bubble lights serve as a star attraction.

HMFM thanks Don Spritzer for the loan of his vintage light collection and for his knowledge and enthusiasm in putting this exhibit together. We also thank Har Shalom for generously providing pictures and memories of Hannukah in Missoula over the decades.

Open April 2019 through November 2019

When the Northern Pacific Railroad arrived in 1883, Missoula transformed into a modern, bustling economic hub. We’ve Been Working on the Railroad tells the story of the everyday people that provided the labor to build, run, and support those railroads, from before the Civil War to today. Follow the survey crews who set the routes of the railroads, breaking promises and treaties with Native American tribes in the process. Meet the men and women who laid the tracks of the railroads, tie by tie, and find out what compelled so many of them to leave their homes and try their luck in the United States. See the links between strikes for better, safer working conditions and the establishment of railroad-run hospitals, which would treat the injured and cure the sick… provided the patients didn’t sue the company for damages or compensation, of course. Trace all these threads back to today, when the railroads still define the lives and capture the imaginations of so many.

Special thanks to Browman Fellow Anne Smyrl for providing the lion’s share of curation for this exhibit. We are also grateful to HMFM friend Larry Ingold for loaning us artifacts from his personal collection to display.

Open January 2019 through April 2019.

In a state featuring millions of acres of wilderness and world-class recreational opportunities, the gear that enables and enhances recreation has evolved over the decades into a central aspect of Montanan identity. The University of Montana’s Dr. Rachel Gross and students of her university courses “Public History” and “Wilderness and the Outdoor Industry” diligently conducted oral history interviews of area residents about their experiences with outdoor recreation and explored private outdoor gear collections. The project culminated in this guest curated exhibit, displaying a small selection of artifacts loaned by area residents.

This exhibit provides the opportunity to track the changes and innovations to outdoor clothing and equipment technology in the post-World War II era. It features outdoor equipment both historical and modern and stories from the Missoulians who owned and used the artifacts and know them best.

Open July 2018 through June 2019

Quilts capture skill, patience, attention to detail, and the potential for beauty in day-to-day life. This selection of quilts from the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula’s permanent collection presents the variety and aesthetic beauty of this traditional craft. Traditionally overlooked as merely utilitarian women’s work and dismissed by the fine arts world as unworthy of consideration, quilting has in recent years gained respect and recognition as an artform in its own right.

This exhibit encourages you to view quilts in a new way. Not simply as the comfy bed spreads we have come to know and love, but also as objects of beauty and expression, crafted with skill and care by women through the ages.

Alongside quilts from HMFM’s permanent collection, this exhibit features quilts loaned to us by Cameron Decker of Salish Kootenai College, Victoria Fleischer, and Diane Sands.

Open August through October 2018

The first Orientation Gallery exhibit following its renovation will be an amazing and historically significant selection of lithographs entitled Stanley & Sohon in Montana: Vintage Prints of the Northern Pacific Railroad Survey, 1853-54.

Organized by local curator and photographer Lee Silliman from his personal collection, this fascinating and beautiful exhibit presents a series of original, hand-tinted lithographs of Montana in the early 1850s illustrated by artists John Mix Stanley and Gustavus Sohon. Stanley and Sohon accompanied Isaac Stevens’ Pacific Railroad survey of 1853-1854 and skillfully illustrated Montana’s pristine geography of prairie, mountains, streams, lakes, as well as the region’s native peoples. The pair of artists’ illustrations were the second known depictions of Montana, following Karl Bodmer’s visit to the region in the early 1830s. Stanley and Sohon’s resulting artworks were published between 1855 and 1861 in a government tome entitled Reports of Explorations and Surveys to Ascertain the Most Practicable and Economic Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.

In 1953, Robert Taft, author of Artists and Illustrators of the Old West 1850-1900 commented on the historical significance of “Report of Explorations and Surveys” and Stanley and Sohon’s work:

“These volumes constitute probably the most important single contemporary source of knowledge on Western geography and history and their value is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of many beautiful plates in color of scenery, native inhabitants, fauna and flora of the Western country. These reports are invaluable first-hand sources for the historian of today, and created tremendous interest at the time they were published. They were discussed in the newspapers, talked about in Congress, in homes, on the street, and were reviewed at length in the contemporary magazines.”

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