Western Heritage Center

Billings, Montana
During the Bicentennial I vowed to visit all the contiguous continental states I had missed in my first half-century. North and South Dakota I can wait until the Tricentennial to see again! But Montana now haunts the Big Sky of my memory's eye. It took me only five minutes off the bus to understand why city smartie Leslie Fiedler could ever stand Missoula after growing up in Newark, New Jersey.

And Helena has the grace and charm of an aging belle dame. I even grew to love the disgracefully wasteful grittiness of Butte. But my heart belongs to Billings and its Richardsonian recycled two blocks south of where the main drags cross. I found it during a Greyhound pitstop while searching for wine, sausage, and cheese as an alternative to Post House fast foolishness.

The Heritage Center is no Field Museum. But it is a microcosm of local lore at its best: cowboys, Indians, ranching, railroads, minerals, and Montaniana to the left, right, and center. I warn you that if you stop and visit it on your way east, it will nail you to Montana for at least a week. Whenever I get a spasm of Montana fever, I reach for the Joseph's multicolored coat of an afghan I bought in their shop for $17.50. (I felt like a burglar slinking back to my bus.)

Who would believe me when I say the Western Heritage Center makes "barbed wire" (for God's sake) more interesting than Lewis and Clark? I was so euphoric after that visit that I missed my bus, and whiled away the hours teaching three middle-aged Billings ladies the bump in a local waterin' hole. I never enjoyed a birthday party more.

--from 20 Museums You've Never Heard Of/Horizon Magazine 1981