November 2010

The Museum is housed in the historic Central School building, which first opened its doors in 1894. In nearly 100 years of serving the educational needs of the Flathead Valley, Central School had been a high school, a junior high school, a grade school, and housed classrooms for Flathead Valley Community College.

It is a sturdy brick and stone structure, one of the few remaining examples of classic Richardsonian Romanesque architecture, with most of it's original hardwood floors, wainscoting, and tin-plate ceilings still in place. The building was boarded-up and threatened with demolition in 1991, but the City of Kalispell renovated the structure at a cost of 2.4 million dollars, and since late 1999, has leased it to the Northwest Montana Historical Society for exhibits, performances, and community meetings.

The Vicariate Apostolate of Nebraska was erected for Montana east of the Cascade Mountains and Wyoming, 1857-1884, and the Vicariate Apostolate of Idaho and Montana was erected for Idaho south of the 46th parallel and Montana west of the Cascade Mountains, 1858-1868. In 1868, the Vicariate Apostolate of Idaho and Montana was expanded to include all of Idaho and in 1884, the Diocese of Helena was erected to included all of present-day Montana. In 1900, the Helena Diocese reported 9,000 baptized Native American Catholics and in 1999 the dioceses of Helena and Great Falls- Billings reported 7,000 and 12,000 respectively.

The C.M. Russell Museum features five galleries dedicated to the life and art of Charles M. Russell. Contemporary western art also has a home at the Museum, featuring works by artists such as Donna Howell-Sickles, Deborah Butterfield, Russell Chatham, Kevin Red Star, Jay Contway, and Gerald Balciar.

In addition to our inside galleries, the Museum Grounds provide an opportunity to enjoy original art in an outdoor setting. Bronze panels by the late Bob Scriver depicting key episodes of Russell's life, and a clay piece by Judy Erickson frame the south entrance. T.D. Kelsey's half-life-size bronze of two buffalo, entitled Change of Seasons, resides beyond the east entrance. A sculpture of Russell himself, also created by Scriver, can be seen at the front entrance of the Museum. In the north parking lot, steel creations by Lyndon Pomeroy are on display.

The Museum of the Mountain Man is located in the small rural town of Pinedale, Wyoming, at the foot of the Wind River Mountains and the Continental Divide near the headwaters of the Green River. At 7000 feet elevation, Pinedale is on a high plateau surrounded by three mountain ranges (Wind River, Wyoming, Gros Ventre).

Starting in 1811, when the Astorians crossed Union Pass and entered the Upper Green River Valley, until the end of the Fur Trade Era, this was one of the richest beaver areas in the west. Six of the fifteen Rocky Mountain Rendezvous were held here on Horse Creek near Daniel, Wyoming.

A reenactment of the Green River Rendezvous is held each year on the second Sunday in July. Pinedale is a rural area dependent primarily on ranching and tourism. For further information on Pinedale and the surrounding area visit Pinedale Online.

Spearheading the effort to develop the Montana Military Museum, now five years in the making and using nine buildings at the century-old fort, are volunteers whose aim is to have all displays in place and ready for public viewing five days-a-week by mid-summer.

The museum's displays, created under the direction of Helena artist Robert Morgan, follow the military in Montana from the arrival of the Lewis and Clark army expedition in 1805, through the Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, Desert Storm and various peacekeeping operations. The military tradition dates from 1806 when Meriwether Lewis' fatal clash with Blackfeet Indians was the U.S. Army's first combat in the state.

On the banks of the Missouri River, in the city park, stands a square bastion and fragments of the walls of old Fort Benton. The ruins of this old American Fur Company post forms one of the points of greatest historic interest to be found between the Mississippi River and the Pacific coast. Established in 1846 when work on the foundations began, the Fort opened for trading the spring of 1847. Like all the other trading posts of this region, Fort Benton was built in a quadrangle. It was over 150 feet square exclusive of the 20-foot square two story bastions. Portholes in the bastion walls for both cannon and riflemen commanded a shooting range on all four sides of the fort. An adobe wall fourteen feet high connected all the buildings and enclosed the quadrangle. By 1865 the fur trade was dead and the American Fur Company sold the fort to the military, ending its control of the Upper Missouri.

The Society's "Motto" is a quote by the famous "Sir Winston Churchill;" "The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see."

SCM is located in a 174-acre town park that was the 19th-century estate of Rhode Island's Civil War-era governor and post-war senator, William Sprague. In addition to the office building, the caretaker's cottage (a private home and not an exhibit) and outbuildings for animals, the campus features seven exhibit buildings or areas: The Metz Hall, the main exhibit hall,a print shop, a carpentry shop, a blacksmith shop, and early transportation exhibit, a textile arts center, a living history farm exhibit, and traveling artifacts.

The John Nicholas Brown Center is located in the historic Nightingale-Brown House on the Brown University campus, at 357 Benefit Street. It was created following the death of John Nicholas Brown in 1979, when his widow and children established an educational foundation in his memory to encourage study and original research in American art, history, architecture, and historic preservation. In 1995 the Center became a part of Brown University.

Over the years the family made only a few changes respecting the historic integrity of their ancestor's legacy. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976 and is an exceptional testament to local craftsman of the time. The only outside decorating firm hired to work on the house was Pottier and Stymus, a design firm from New York hired at the beginning of their career. The majority of their furnishings still exist in the house.

In 1865 the Lippitt's new home, a three story, twenty room Renaissance Revival with Italian Palazzo elements positioned the family to a new social standing in 19^th century Providence. Embellished with elaborate faux finishes from the walls to the ceilings, marble statues, colorful stained glass windows, ornately carved woodwork details and monogrammed dining service the family was ready to entertain in high style. Visitors included the founding families of Providence and the renowned Professor Alexander Graham Bell and later generations entertained Cole Porter and Jack Lemmon.