Huge, downtown spot bought for Clack Museum

While it will be years before any grand opening celebrations are held, the search for a permanent location for the H. Earl Clack Museum seems to be over.

The museum funding foundation announced Tuesday it had purchased the Griggs Printing and Publishing building on the 0 Block of 5th Avenue Monday from owners Jim and Bonita Griggs.

Museum board chair Judi Dritshulas said Tuesday that she is thrilled with the purchase.

"It will give the history of Havre a wonderful home and something the people of Havre will be proud of," she said.

Jim Griggs said Tuesday he is happy to help the museum find a new location, although he will continue to operate Griggs Printing in the location.

"We are going to continue to operate our business here as normal and work with the foundation to help put the museum into this building," he said.

Elaine Morse, president of the Foundation Board, said the museum displays will stay where they are in the Holiday Village Mall for some time before the museum opens downtown.

"This is a way-out-in-the-future thing ... ," she said. "This opportunity presented itself, and it's got tons of potential."

Morse added that the museum boards and staff members are very happy with the location in the mall, but said she doubts that, in the long term, the location provides enough space for the Clack Museum.

Dritshulas said some space in the new building is rented out, and the board will work with them to allow them to continue to use the space while the location is cleaned and renovated, and artifacts are moved to their new home.

The museum board has searched for a new location for the Clack Museum for nearly two decades.

In the mid-1990s, when the new post office opened, the board worked with the city to move to the previous post office and federal courthouse building on the 300 Block of 3rd Avenue. The city purchased the building with the agreement that the museum would pay the mortgage and use the building.

The funding for the project ran short early last decade, with the museum unable to make its last balloon mortgage payment. A fundraising drive started, with donations made including an anonymous donor gifting the entire $10,000 needed for the last payment.

Funding continued to be a problem, including the higher cost of renovating and upgrading the building due to its listing on the national registry of historic places. That requires work on the building to meet specifications to keep its historic aspect.

The museum then moved to a location on the west end of the Holiday Village, near where Big R now sits. When Big R expanded, the museum moved to its location on the east end of the mall, which also is near the Wahkpa Chu'gn Buffalo Jump archaeological site, which the museum board also oversees.

The board searched for a location to erect a new building, with the prime sites selected either land overlooking the bison kill site, behind Triangle Telephone-Hill County Electric just west of the mall, or on the corner of the Great Northern Fairgrounds.

While the Griggs Printing building will provide that permanent location, the more short-term benefit is just bringing all of the museum's artifacts now in storage together.

"Right now, the big thing is to get our collections together," Dritshulas said, adding that, at the moment, the museum has artifacts stored in locations ranging from the Hill County Courthouse Annex basement to the Holiday Village basement to Fort Assinniboine.

The Hill County government also has directed the museum board to clear the space in the courthouse annex, and the board has been looking for alternate storage for a year or more.

Morse said another benefit will be having all of the museum collections in one location - now, it is difficult to build displays with the artifacts spread out as they are.

It also will allow displaying items that cannot be shown now, such as surreys and wagons including an H. Earl Clack oil wagon now stored at the fort, she said.

The downtown building has a long history of its own, including its time as Anderson Wholesale, which still is painted on its north front overlooking 1st Street.

Griggs, who moved into the building 25 years ago when Penningtons, the distributor that bought out Anderson Wholesale, moved into a new location, commented on the building's long history.

"A dairy was here - it's been around since the 1920s," Griggs said.

Morse said the board's work, at least in planning, will begin almost immediately, but will be behind the scenes.

"It's not going to be anything anybody sees, cleaning, prep work," she said, adding, "The planning is the biggest thing. If we're going to move stuff, we want to move it once more and that's it."

Morse said the permanent locations for artifacts will be planned in advance, so once they are moved into the building they will be located where they will be displayed.

But that is long in the future. Dritshulas said she expects it to take years to clean and renovate and move the artifacts.

"It's going to be a long-term thing," she said, adding, "We're going to need lots of workers and volunteers."

While Dritshulas said having the downtown location will be a benefit, she said having the museum next to Wahkpa Chu'gn also has benefitted both in the last few years. The board is considering providing transportation from the museum to the archaeological site, once the museum opens in the new location.

"It was so nice to have them together," Dritshulas said, adding, "And they will be together for many years."