Crazy Mountain Museum

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the National Trails System five special (toy) dogs, the Lewis and Clark Pups, will travel in the paws of their ancestor Seaman, dog of Meriwether Lewis. The pups will travel more than 3,700 miles to complete their mission to commemorate and protect the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. They will be joined by Seaman Jr. who will complete his portion of the mission on the International Space Station.

As they make their stops they will be reporting back in on their adventures. Follow Rocky, Harper, Dakota, Keelie and Seaman Jr. at: https://www.nps.gov/lecl/newfie-news.htm

Hello! Keelie here! Today I am in Big Timber, Montana to check out the Crazy Mountain Museum. They sure have awesome views here! The museum is dedicated to teaching visitors about Sweet Grass County’s history, which I learned is pretty exciting! It includes European settlers, Lewis and Clark, mining, ranching, and lots of other stuff too! Here I am sitting outside in the Lewis & Clark Garden. They have beautiful blanket flowers here! It is full of plants native to Montana that Clark wrote about in his journal while he was in the area. There’s also another one, called the Heritage Garden, which has plants that came from nearby old homesteads - what a special way to keep the past alive!

Of course I had to learn more about what Lewis, Clark, and the other members of the Corps of Discovery did when they were in the area. It sounds like they were happy to be here with a beautiful place to rest and find shade, food, and water. I also learned about a lot of other things while I was here too. The museum has both permanent and rotating exhibits that change out from time to time. Some of the rotating displays include vintage clothes, eyeglasses, and doll collections. There are a lot of permanent displays, a few of them are a Veteran’s Wall, a stagecoach, an authentic one room schoolhouse, an impressive archeological exhibit, and an exhibit about the sheep industry which I learned was important in Sweet Grass County.

No trip to Big Timber is complete without a picture with the Crazy Mountains! As I was sitting here, I thought about how Lewis, Clark, and of course Seaman, looked at these same exact mountains! It’s especially cool because I don’t think the view has changed much since they were here. In fact, I even saw a collection of seven paintings called The Historic Crossroads in the museum. They show the changes to Sweet Grass County over thousands of years ranging in times from the Ice Age, to when the Corps of Discovery was here, to when settlers came. That was really cool to look at!

My last stop was the newly added “Selfie Spot” by this beautiful Quaking Aspen tree. I loved getting to come here to explore the mountains and learn about a lot of neat stuff! A couple of my favorite parts in the museum were the town diorama, and the Norwegian Stabbur. The diorama is a replica of what Big Timber looked like in 1907. I couldn’t believe all the details there were in this mini town! The Stabbur is a Norwegian storage house that honors the people who traveled here from Norway and dug roots in Sweet Grass County. I’ve never seen a building shaped like that, it must have taken some skill to build! Overall, it was a fun day in Montana.

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