MISSOULA — With the end of the year closing in, the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula notched historic success this week by landing a $350,000 grant to complete the restoration of its World War II alien detention barracks.
It also sought and received approval to change the bylaws guiding the museum's board of trustees in an effort to drum up more diverse representation.
“We feel this is our first step in this direction by changing some things that maybe were preventing folks in the past from serving on the board,” said Matt Lautzenheiser, the museum's executive director. “The internal changes include a more diverse museum board.”
The Historical Museum at Fort Missoula collects and presents the history of Missoula, the fort and its former military role. It also preserves the history of forest management and the wood products industry in western Montana.
On the military front, the fort served as a military post starting in 1877 to protect area settlers from conflicts with Indian tribes. In 1941, it was turned over to the Department of Immigration and Naturalization for use as an alien detention center. It primarily held non-military Italian men and Japanese Americans who were considered “high risk” after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Back in 2020, the county conducted an architectural assessmentamid plans to restore two detention barracks dating back to the detention period. The assessment was funded in part by a $40,000 grant. That effort set the stagefor renovations.
But Lautzenheiser said funding for the project wasn't fully complete until this week when the MJ Murdoch Charitable Trust provided the museum a $350,000 grant to complete the work.
“We were fully funded,” said Lautzenheiser. “We should be able to complete the project next year with our new collection storage building that we use to store textiles in. It will be fully climate-controlled. That was the last piece needed to fall in place for this entire project. The alternative would have been spending the next three to five years trying to piece together smaller grants to raise that kind of funding.”
One of the historic barracks will include an immersive display of the role the fort took as a detention camp during World War II.
