The Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, considered a tourism jewel in central Montana that draws some 50,000 visitors each year, will lose its entire full-time staff of three this year to retirements and a resignation. That includes center director Duane Buchi, who will retire in early Septembe r, and Ray Tetrault, the longtime facilities manager who is also retiring. The third employee, Education Coordinator Cortney Reedy, is resigning. It’s unclear when and whether those positions, which are U.S. Forest Service staff jobs, will be filled. “There will be a permanent person at some point,” said Kelly Paladino, executive director of the Lewis and Clark Foundation. “We don’t know when that will be.” Just under 30 years old, the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center has been not only a tourism draw but also a cultural touchstone for the history of those who have lived among the five falls of the Missouri River. Its formidable, cliffside building came into the world with great fanfare amid a decade-long bicentennial celebration of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The center’s grand opening on Independence Day 1998 was attended by more than 1,000 people, including Gov. Marc Racicot, Congressman Rick Hill and U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, according to news reports at the time. Fellow U.S. Sen. Max Baucus also attended and shared remarks from President Bill Clinton. But over the ensuing decades, the interpretive center’s financial support and staffing declined under the management of the Forest Service, which is now itself embroiled in a massive reorganization. And among the Forest Service’s main objectives, like forest management, fire prevention and timber production, stakeholders worry that an interpretive center in a small Montana town might be cast further aside. “If you don’t have the staffing from the federal government to implement the programming, it becomes a little iffy to pull it off,” Jane Weber, the interpretive center’s first director from 1998 to 2010, told Montana Free Press. A PROJECT OF THE FOREST SERVICE Weber slept on the floor at the interpretive center the night of July 3, 1998, before its grand opening. Heavy thunderstorms tested the new building, and Weber was both cleaning up wet spots and prepping to host early-morning guests for the big day. The Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, which opened in Great Falls in 1998, sits along a hillside overlooking the Missouri River. Credit: Matt Hudson / MTFP It was a triumph for Great Falls, Weber and others told MTFP. The community raised more than $3 million to match federal funds that were used to build the facility. At the grand opening, then-U.S. Forest Service Director Mike Dombeck presented the local matching funds on a large novelty check. An interpretive center operating under the Forest Service was a bit uncommon, sources told MTFP. While the federal agency operates some museums, interpretive centers and visitor centers, they are relatively few compared to the hundreds of brick-and-mortar sites overseen by the National Park Service. Weber said the NPS declined to take on the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center with its nearest administrative office at Glacier National Park. The Forest Service, which already had an agency office in Great Falls, agreed to manage the facility. The interpretive center also had a strong ally in a nonprofit foundation that supported its operations and funded the hiring of Indigenous interpreters. Weber said she had as many as 15 full-time employees during peak summer seasons and more than 100 volunteers. That staff allowed the center to fill the calendar with daily lectures, activities and events for tourists and locals. “We did activities where you could go down and volunteer escorts took you from the interpretive center down to the water’s edge,” Weber said. “And we developed that site down there so you could learn to pitch a teepee with someone. You might be scraping a hide.” In contrast, the center will soon lose its three full-time employees and currently gets help from about 30 volunteers. Even in those early years, it became apparent that long-term support from the Forest Service wasn’t there. “We saw the writing on the wall 20 years ago in terms of their resources and funds availability in the future,” said Jay Russell, who was director of the Lewis and Clark Foundation from 2004 to 2021. “What we thought could happen is happening.” Bill Avey had a 40-year career with the U.S. Forest Service, including work as the forest supervisor of the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest from 2012 to 2022. The interpretive center is managed by the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest. He is now board chair of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees.  “We saw the writing on the wall 20 years ago in terms of their resources and funds availability in the future. What we thought could happen is happening.” Jay Russell, director of the Lewis and Clark Foundation from 2004 to 2021 He said the Forest Service has invested about $14 million in the interpretive center, but the center hasn’t received the sustaining funds needed to keep staff and programming at the same levels over time. Avey said that dollars for the interpretive center were largely pulled from a fund that more commonly supports trails, campsites and outdoor amenities. “We never got any earmarked funds for it in my time,” Avey said. “The Forest Service never earmarked any funds for operations and maintenance of it during my tenure. We had to make it up out of, predominantly, recreation funding.” The cutbacks took a toll over the years. As staff positions went unfilled, the programming they supported began to suffer as well. The local foundation provided as much support as it could, but it operated on a small budget. Nonprofit filings show that the Lewis and Clark Foundation rarely exceeded $200,000 in revenue through the 2010s. “I saw the money starting to go down, but I found creative ways through the nonprofit to keep it beefed up,” Weber said. “But when you lose staff, you don’t have people to write grants. You don’t have the people to find and go out and work with you to ask for money.” Through the cutbacks, the interpretive center has remained a strong tourism destination. Visitors coming through Great Falls are typically seeking outdoor activities such as scenic road trips, wildlife viewing and hiking. But when it comes to museum facilities, the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center is the leading tourist draw, according to Rebecca Engum, executive director of Great Falls Montana Tourism. The Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center’s large main windows offer sweeping views of the Missouri River, where the Corps of Discovery found troublesome waterfalls to portage around. Credit: Matt Hudson / MTFP “The fact that it exists and the fact that this interpretive center with the most extensive collection of the Corps of Discovery expedition is really a huge selling point for us,” Engum said. “And we spend a considerable amount of money promoting that and sharing it with our community.” But its standing as a local attraction has waned a bit. In 2021, Engum’s data showed that 21% of Great Falls visitors checked out the interpretive center. Last year, it was around 10%. But the center remains a big attraction and part of a larger portfolio of cultural marketing for the Lewis and Clark trail, which has its own cadre of dedicated history tourists. Avey said that while the Forest Service’s focus was more on outdoor spaces, he made internal appeals for greater support of the interpretive center. “You can’t dismiss the impact on a community of recreation and tourism, either,” he said. “So funding those things is equally important.” A TURNING POINT The interpretive center will shut down from this October until April 2027, though the closure reflects an investment. A $600,000 allocation from Congress in the 2020 Great Outdoors Act will allow the center to refresh some of its exhibits. That same bill also allocated just over $1 million for building improvements. “We’re going to give this old girl a little refresh, make it look good and continue for another 80 years,” said Paladino, the current executive director of the Lewis and Clark Foundation. Paladino spoke to MTFP last week from her office at the interpretive center. Her window overlooks the Missouri River and groups of seagulls squawking around Steamboat Island. A longtime collaborator, the foundation currently runs the gift shop and helps with volunteer and programming activities. It will soon take over management of the ticket window and is working toward adding a full-time marketing staff member funded by the foundation. Asked about disruptions at the interpretive center, Paladino remained steadfastly upbeat. “We’re not overly concerned, truly,” she said. “We’re looking forward to the new direction that we’re in. We are honored and thrilled by the support that we have from our partners, our supporters, our donors.” But with the departures of the only three full-time Forest Service employees — people whom Paladino acknowledged manage the day-to-day operations of the center — she was less certain about what would become of those positions. She said that a Forest Service employee would be coming to “assist.” Kelly Paladino, executive director of the Lewis and Clark Foundation, poses for a photo in the interpretive center’s entry on July 17, 2026. Credit: Matt Hudson / MTFP “And I know that it’s their intention to bring somebody on board,” she said. The Forest Service declined to answer questions about staff or funding at the interpretive center. Agency spokesperson Matthew Ferrell responded to a list of questions with an emailed statement. “Thank you for your interest in the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center (LCIC),” Ferrell wrote. “We are committed to providing quality customer service to the public at LCIC and will continue to work with our partners to explore new ways of operating to ensure the public can enjoy the center long into the future. We cannot provide specific internal budget or staffing decisions at this time.” Buchi, the interpretive center’s director, also declined to comment last week. All this takes place during a tumultuous reorganization across the U.S. Forest Service. The agency is restructuring regional offices and moving its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City. Some 7,000 employees departed the agency last year, according to WyoFile. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz told the NPR podcast 1A in April that the agency has $3 billion in deferred maintenance requests. While responding to questions about Forest Service research facilities, Schultz indicated that there are budget deficits across the agency. “We cannot maintain the facilities that we have today, so we’re making choices,” Schultz said on the podcast. No one who spoke with MTFP believes that the interpretive center will close. But the facility’s future management is unknown, particularly amid federal budget cuts that have affected thousands of staff jobs across the country. “Hopefully the Forest Service will work with the community to come up with a viable solution down the road,” said Russell, the former foundation director. “Because the community made a huge investment in the facility, and a lot of people donated a lot of money to see it come to fruition and see it become one of the jewels in our crown here in Great Falls. And I don’t think anyone wants to see it go away.” In-depth, independent reporting on the stories impacting your community from reporters who know your town. The post Federal support in question at Great Falls’ popular interpretive center appeared first on Montana Free Press. ...read more read less