Ninepipes Museum not willing to become a piece of history
Hey savvy news reader! Thanks for choosing local.
You are now reading
2 of 3 free articles.
Twenty tiny faces can barely contain their excitement as they reach the last stop on their tour of the Ninepipes Museum of Early Montana. Teachers remind the kindergartners to hang on to their partners’ hands and keep their voices down — but once they catch a glimpse through the doorway, silence is almost impossible.
“They always like this part the best. It’s hard to hold them back, especially if they’ve been here before,” museum founder Bud Cheff, Jr. says.
He’s led the youngsters through room after room filled with artifacts: Indian jewelry, weapons, household items, furs, trapping equipment and anything you can think of that might have been part of life in historic Montana. But it’s the last room that’s most awe-inspiring for the children.
When they finally get the go-ahead to round the corner, the kids are greeted by a life-size world imitating Montana’s great outdoors. A bighorn sheep regally climbs a boulder; he’s dwarfed by the moose standing behind him. Black bear, antelope, wolf, eagle, hawks, owls — they’re all here. A small stream trickles down rocks to a traditional Indian campsite in front of a mountain mural on the wall. Bud’s wife Laurel instructs the students to sit down on two split-log benches and explains that this is what a campsite in the days of cowboys and Indians would look like.
“If we listen closely, we might be able to hear what it sounded like,” Laurel says.
Moments later, the sounds of someone playing a small drum and singing fill the air. It could be a recording, but the kids are convinced there’s a live person in the teepee.
And they’re right. After a few minutes, 95-year-old Bud Cheff, Sr. crawls out of the teepee, drum and drumstick in hand. He uses a cane to walk over to the children, and tells them how, as a boy, he used to go fishing for frogs with his young Indian friends, using red ribbons for bait.
“(Frogs) used to be everywhere,” before seagulls and other birds of prey wiped out most of the population, he explains.
It’s stories like this one that inspired Bud Jr.’s love of history. His dad’s friends would come to visit and sit around swapping tales, and “there was nothing I liked better than to sit and listen to those stories,” he said.
His mother also fed the boy’s interest, reading to him by kerosene lamplight. And on a family trip at age 9, Bud found a tangible piece of history in a cave in Bad Rock Canyon: an old war club.
“From there on, I was hooked,” he said.
Collecting artifacts became second nature to Bud. It started with finding coins, buttons, arrowheads and the war club, and his hobby grew as people often gave him things they wouldn’t entrust to anyone else.
“I’ve just always been a pack rat, I guess,” he says, smiling.
He learned the importance of having a safe place to keep historical artifacts when the Cheff family home burned in 1960, destroying, among other things, the war club from Bad Rock Canyon. Bud dreamed of one day having a safe, fireproof home for his and others’ artifacts, and eventually realized that dream in 1997 with the opening of the Ninepipes Museum, which he and Laurel built beside their business, the Ninepipes Lodge. Today, the museum has more than 200 members and an extensive collection that uniquely chronicles the history of Western Montana.
The museum is a nonprofit organization separate from the Cheff’s lodge, and Bud and Laurel had planned to eventually donate the museum building to the Ninepipes Museum.
But, as Bud says, “sometimes things don’t work out.”
In the past few years, the economic recession hit the lodge hard, making keeping up with the mortgage payments impossible. And just before last Christmas, the Cheffs learned that the bank would foreclose on the Ninepipes Lodge. While it’s a separate entity from the lodge, the museum’s fate is tied to that of the lodge since the museum leases the building and accompanying 3.5 acres from Ninepipes Lodge, LLC. The lodge is closed and for sale, but no buyers have come forward.
“That was our big hope, that it would sell,” Laurel said, so that the museum could keep leasing the building from new owners.
It would take $450,000 to buy the building, and that’s money the museum simply doesn’t have. But in January when the word got out of the danger to the museum’s future, the Cheffs and the museum’s 13 other board members were inundated with supportive phone calls and letters from people wanting the museum to stay open.
“We get emails and letters, several a day, from people wanting to know what they can do to help,” Bud said then. “We had so many positive calls and such, the board members decided maybe something could be done.”
The overwhelming response from supporters prompted the board to set up a “Save the Museum Fund” at Community Bank in Ronan and send out e-mails asking for donations. Nearly a year later, they’ve raised $80,000 in cash and pledges, but still have $370,000 to go, which they hope to get through grants.
“We are so thankful for the $80,000 that has already been raised and pledged. At this time, we are seeking no donations, but pledges only. We are hoping to secure $100,000 in pledges from valley individuals and small business owners,” board member Kathy Senkler said.
By asking for pledges only, the board hopes to avoid a situation where people’s donations would be in vain if the museum can’t raise the full amount. In addition to searching extensively for grants and other sources of funding, the board has looked for other suitable facilities in the area, but their efforts have so far been fruitless.
“From the start, the board has examined every other option (besides private donations),” Laurel said. “It’s a tough time, and sometimes, I’m a little embarrassed asking people to do this — it’s not a matter of life and death, but it is an important part of the history of the area.
“But everyone’s having the same problems we are.”
If the museum can find the funds to reach $450,000, donors will be asked to fulfill their pledges with dollars; Bud and Laurel will donate the $423,000 they’ve already invested into the building mortgage; and their collection — about 60 percent of what’s in the museum — will remain on permanent loan to the museum.
The board also has established a perpetual donor recognition plan so that nameplates for donors’ businesses or families will be permanently displayed in a way unique to the museum, such as on a teepee or aspen grove.
Bud and Laurel emphasized that while they obviously have a deep interest in seeing the museum succeed, they have nothing to gain financially from donations. If the museum can’t stay open, “one way or another, our bills will get paid,” Laurel said.
Anyone interested in helping can call 644-3435 for more information, but most importantly, everyone’s still invited to visit the museum and see firsthand why so many people believe it’s worth saving.
“I don’t think they know what they have here,” Bud said.
