Interpretive Plan
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MISSOULA DOWNTOWN HERITAGE INTERPRETIVE PLAN DRAFT - NOVEMBER 2019 Prepared for the Missoula In collaboration with the City of Missoula Historic Preservation Downtown Foundation by Office and Downtown Missoula Partnership. Supported by a Historical Research Associates, Inc. grant from the Montana Department of Commerce Missoula public art. Credit: HRA TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION . 5 PART 1: FOUNDATION . 13 Purpose and Guiding Principles . 14 Interpretive Goals . 15 Themes . 15 Interpretive Theme Matrices . 19 Setting and Audiences . 23 Issues and Influences Affecting Interpretation . 24 PART 2: EXISTING CONDITIONS . 26 Interpretation in Downtown Missoula . 27 Information and Orientation . 28 Audience Experience . 29 Programming . 31 Potential Partners . 32 PART 3: RECOMMENDATIONS . 37 Introduction . 38 Actions Related to the Connectivity of Downtown Interpretation . 38 Actions Related to Special Events . 41 Actions Related to the Missoula Downtown Master Plan . 41 Actions Related to Pre-Visit/Distance Interpretation . 42 Actions Related to Interpreting Many Perspectives and Underrepresented Heritage . 44 Actions Related to Audience Experience . 47 Actions Related to Program Administration . 51 Actions Related to Scholarship . 51 Actions Related to Additional Interpretative Elements . 52 Actions Related to Collaboration . 52 Actions Related to Educators and Youth Outreach . 54 Actions Related to General Outreach and Marketing . 54 Recommended Implementation Plan . 55 Summary . 69 PART 4: PLANNING RESOURCES . 70 HRA Interpretive Planning Team . 71 Interpretive Planning Advisory Group . 71 Acknowledgements . 71 Glossary . 71 Select Interpretation Resources . 72 Select Topical Resources . 72 INTRODUCTION Downtown heritage mural interpreting local railroad history. Credit: HRA Missoula Downtown Heritage | Interpretive Plan | DRAFT Nov 2019 5 Missoula Textile is a Downtown Missoula heritage business, having been in operation for more than 100 years. Credit: HRA 6 HISTORICA L R ESEA RCH A SSOCIATES As the downtown cultural landscape evolves during this pivotal time, Missoula is presented with an opportunity to both embrace change and to celebrate the characteristics and values that make its Downtown unique — its heritage. Downtown Missoula is undergoing a period of museums, and heritage areas—like Downtown unprecedented growth and redevelopment. A Missoula—consider ideas, make choices, and set flurry of construction activity is bringing forth priorities about interpretation and educational exciting development in the form of new and programming. remodeled hotels, housing, businesses, shops, The Missoula Downtown Heritage Interpretive restaurants, and even a library. The recently Plan is designed to guide downtown heritage completed Downtown Master Plan presents a interpretation by encouraging audiences far-reaching vision for community design. As to make meaningful connections to the the downtown cultural landscape evolves during shared human experience represented there. this pivotal time, Missoula is presented with It identifies interpretive goals and issues, an opportunity to both embrace change and examines existing conditions, and provides to celebrate the characteristics and values that recommendations to implement over a period make its Downtown unique—its heritage. of time. It also serves as an instructional tool Interpretive planning is an essential first and source of inspiration for interpretive step in preserving the heritage and distinct practitioners. More than anything, it presents characteristics of Downtown Missoula. It is a vision for a comprehensive heritage program about identifying the meaning behind natural that will shape the downtown experience and cultural resources and finding ways to and celebrate the distinct character of the communicate that meaning to the public. community by tying together key natural and Interpretive planning helps historic sites, cultural resources into a cohesive network. Missoula Downtown Heritage | Interpretive Plan | DRAFT Nov 2019 7 Overview Heritage is the tangible and the Downtown Missoula is many things to many intangible, the natural and the different people. It is a crossroads and a cultural. This collective heritage gathering place. It is the homeland of the Salish reveals a deeper understanding people and a haven for artists and students. of where we have been and It is buildings made of local brick alongside where we are going. marble and granite courthouses. It is a story of displacement, growth, and perseverance. At the root of this place is Downtown Missoula’s heritage. We consider “heritage” to be the Christopher P. Higgins and Frank Worden collective fabric that defines and distinguishes established their trading post at Hell Gate in Missoula. It is the spirit of place. It is how 1860, creating the commercial foundation for Missoula sounds, looks, smells, and feels. It what became Missoula. Many others followed. is what makes Missoula, Missoula. Heritage Missoula grew into an economic hub of Western is the tangible and the intangible, the natural Montana. The Mullan Road brought people and the cultural. It is both the Clark Fork and commerce into the valley and the steel River and the story of the people who lived spines of the Northern Pacific and Milwaukee beside it. It is memory and experience, art and Railroads further bolstered Missoula’s fledgling song. This collective heritage reveals a deeper community. A. B. Hammond’s lumber empire understanding of where we have been and provided the bones for growth, and the mills at where we are going. Bonner supplied not only Missoula, but Butte The wilderness surrounds Missoula. Downtown and other Montana towns as well. Fed by the perches on the banks of the Clark Fork River expansive agricultural wealth of the Flathead and and sits in the shadow of mountains. The valley Bitterroot valleys, Missoula earned its moniker walls bear the rippled reminders of cataclysmic as the Garden City. Today, Downtown carries glacial floods. Fire has shaped the forests, just on the tradition with Saturday markets. The as the rivers have reshaped the valleys over entrepreneurial spirit thrives in its multitude centuries of geologic time. Missoula is the of coffee shops, restaurants, breweries, and natural landscape. boutiques. Missoula has been both a departure point and Missoula has long been a gathering place. The a destination. The Salish and Pend d’Oreille Salish harvested camas and bitterroot in the gathered here before traveling east through the spring. Presidents have given speeches on its valley to hunt bison; the Blackfeet came here street corners. Music festivals have filled the when ranging west, sometimes using the high long summer days. Every autumn, students canyons for raiding. Lewis and Clark passed return to the University of Montana and infuse this way and ventured west across Lolo Pass. the town with renewed intellectual energy. 8 HISTORICA L R ESEA RCH A SSOCIATES INTRODUCTION Winter brings skiing enthusiasts and long Preservation Office and other Downtown months to anticipate fishing and huckleberry Missoula stakeholders to form a Downtown picking in the summer. From the St. Paul Missoula Heritage Committee. The fruit of African Methodist Episcopal Church to Har this effort appeared in the development of Shalom to the St. Francis-Xavier Catholic a downtown heritage program they called Church, from the political activism of Gals Unseen Missoula. The interpretive offering, Against Smog Pollution (GASP) to anti-war modeled after a highly successful special event protests, Missoulians have a way of turning of the same name, consisted of a guided tour their collective voices and shared experiences through several historic downtown buildings. into the foundations of their community. They soon added a second tour focused on the historic riverfront and the story of Missoula’s Downtown also represents a haven for the arts. redevelopment over time. The initial success of From the Wilma to the Missoula Community Unseen Missoula was evidenced by a season’s Theater, from vaudeville to River City Roots worth of tours selling out in a matter of weeks. Festival, the downtown streets have hosted artists of all calibers. The Blackfoot River The popularity of Unseen Missoula led the inspired Norman MacLean to write A River heritage committee to consider interpretive Runs Through It, and an affinity for the town planning in order to chart a path forward for brought the passage: “The world is full of future downtown interpretation. In support bastards, the number increasing rapidly the of this effort, the Montana Department of further one gets from Missoula, Montana.” Commerce awarded the Missoula Downtown Each year, filmmakers from around the world Foundation (MDF) a tourism grant to begin arrive for the International Wildlife Film the interpretive planning process. MDF and Festival and Big Sky Documentary Film Historical Research Associates, Inc., (HRA), Festival. Every month, Downtown hosts gallery a historical consulting firm headquartered in showings and gatherings on First Fridays. Downtown Missoula since 1974, provided the remaining resources to produce the plan. The Front Street, once home to a Chinese City of Missoula Historic Preservation Office community and a thriving red-light district, provided oversight and served as an active is now home to boutiques and eateries. The participant throughout this effort. sawmills have given way to parks and river trails. Missoula’s Downtown is the confluence The interpretive planning