One of the first things you notice about the National Conservation Legacy Center is how it smells like a sun-soaked campground. Various wood products are on display as key features of both the center’s architecture and story.
The familiar face of America’s 26th president greets visitors from a screen just before the main exhibition hall, where a reenactor plays Theodore Roosevelt in a series of films.
“I was always an outdoorsman at heart. Hunting, fishing, sitting under the vast starry skies gave me space to think, something we all needed at the start of the 20th century. [Phone rings] And now, even more, deep into the 21st. Hmm, telemarketers. What? You thought I was feeding to you from the past? No, no, no.”
From here, the center opens up into an immersive display that feels like a walk in the forest. Lisa Tate, director of the National Museum of Forest Service History, said that’s what they were going for.
“We wanted these pillars, they're called plinths in the museum industry, but these pillars, we wanted it to feel like a forest,” Tate said.
The National Conservation Legacy Center is under the umbrella of the broader National Museum of Forest Service History in Missoula. The center first opened in July as a space dedicated to conservation history, the only one of its kind in the U.S.
Dave Stack is the curator and has volunteered at the museum for decades, and before that he worked for the Forest Service.
“It's the ability to save the conservation and Forest Service history of the United States,” Stack said.
With so much history to cover, the center took a multimedia approach. There are digital plinths on tree-looking pillars, which change their display as you approach and the biggest screen in Montana, at 20 feet tall and 60 feet long, projects forest and prairie landscapes. The main exhibition hall includes sections devoted to land management, climate change, fire and recreation.
“It shows pictures from the past of recreation on our national forests and all of the different things that we're able to do on our public lands,” Tate said.
It also features voices from those who have worked in conservation like Brian Payne, who left a career in forest economics to help recruit minorities into forestry.
“I could do something for civil rights without worrying about getting shot. I mean, it's forestry, man. It's my profession,” Payne said.
Tate said these voice modules can be changed out to feature different people. She said one reason Missoula was picked for the center’s location is because the Forest Service is so intertwined in people’s lives here. And, she noted, Missoula is home to the agency’s first administrative office in the U.S.
The Trump Administration announced major funding and personnel cuts throughout the Forest Service in 2025. There were protests across the country, including in Missoula. Tate said the center is a nonprofit and doesn’t receive any federal funding. Instead, private donations helped fund the oral historian, who recorded nearly 250 voices. Tate said none of them included people who lost their jobs during that slew of cuts, but it’s a goal to add them.
“Our oral historian also goes out on the road and he'll travel to different communities, and we work with different Forest Service groups in those communities to arrange for people to be interviewed,” Tate said.
The museum and the center are open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.