We’ve traveled the state far and wide, even hit the most obscure corners, and one thing we’ve never failed to miss is the innumerable “free museum” offerings. The most recent one we found, however, is easily the biggest and best of the free museums, and the value was second to none.
The Prairie County Museum in Terry, Montana, really tops the list of free museums, and maybe even by a mile. What’s better is that it’s right in Terry, Montana, right along I-94, so it’s a perfect stop for east-west road-trippers.
This place is simply fantastic. If you hit them when they’re open, you’ll get access to a half-block of buildings, and if you hit them on the off-season when they aren’t as open as they would be otherwise… they’ll open for you, and just to share the history,
The first building you’ll find is right off the main drag, just a spitting distance north of the Stockman Bank building. From there you’ll see a sandwich board saying they’re open, but if they aren’t, that doesn’t mean you can’t check it out.
This museum is a true historical society, meaning they really and truly care more about the preservation of the history than they do about raking in a few bucks from the exhibits. I’ve met these people, and I have yet to meet a single one of them that doesn’t believe the preservation of the history doesn’t all-but trump everything else… Even Trump himself, but he’s barely on TV anymore, so the focus remains squarely on the museum.
I don’t call this a museum, I call it a museum complex… or at least I tried to when I met with them, and they didn’t much care for the concept. The lady I spoke with said she didn’t want people outside of Terry knowing they had so much to offer, because she didn’t know how the city would deal with everybody if they found out that they have a whole block of exhibits to show.
I say they can figure that out when the time comes to pass, but for now, they need to get a few more faces on the exhibits… am I right?
The first thing you’ll find, should you go to the wonderful Prairie County Museum, is the old bank building, which has been lovingly stocked with an assortment of exhibits from wall to wall, and the old upstairs offices have been no less lovingly appointed. Yes, that’s right, there are three times as many exhibits upstairs as you’ll find downstairs.
And if you catch the right curator on the right day, you’ll also get access to the Evelyn Cameron Gallery next door, which appears closed from outside, but you just need an unlock from the free museum next door.
Beyond that you’ve got some serious stuff you can take a gander at and fully enjoy… Like what? Read on to find out, naturally.
One of the bigger and more obvious outside exhibits includes the old caboose. Did you know that trains don’t use them anymore? They don’t. The whole concept of the caboose was rendered obsolete decades ago, but the museum still has one so you can still tell your youngsters about them, and explain how technology has changed things.
The adjacent building (just behind) is an even older bank building, and though it’s long out of commission, much of it is still in place, and the history is even richer here than in the first bank building museum.
The easy biggest attraction is the massive back-building put in place in recent years. From the curb it might look like a large steel building, but from inside it looks more appropriately like what it really is, which is a massive repository for donated items the main building didn’t have room to house. This isn’t exactly the storage space for all things that couldn’t fit in the main building, but in practice, that’s kind of what it is. Are you looking for old fire fighter hats? Antique items you can’t even figure out the use of? This is where they all live.
How about a Truly Regal Toilet? Oh yes, they have that. How about a steam heated toilet built and sold to the miners and ranchers sold at prices so premium that, well, that they could build a steam heated stone building specifically for the purpose of outhouse poop-ery… There was one such thing in Terry at a time, and it was so well built that it remains today.
How about a night or month in the world’s smallest Jail? Oh yes, Terry still has possession of what I’ve found to be the smallest jail in all of the old west, the western world, or the greater world at large. If you doubt our founding fathers’ ability to be horrible people, how about putting them in a tiny wooden shed in the dead of summer or winter… how many convictions can survive long enough to come of such situations? I’m going to say the answer is painfully few.
The small wooden jail was actually used for a museum fund raiser one weekend. Prominent citizens were recruited to stay in the jail until enough “bail money” could be raised from their friends. The original Terry jail is located across the railroad tracks from the museum and is a solid brick house.
This museum is a great find, and it’s free by donation, and I do suggest you make a donation, because they rely almost entirely on donations. They don’t get wicked Federal Pork money (though they might like it,) so every penny you put in really goes to the place you intend it.
