Interpretive center going up at buffalo jump

Havre Daily News/Nikki Carlson

Construction workers carefully move and lift the first half of the new Wahkpa Chu'gn Buffalo Jump Interpretive Center building with a crane to the entrance of the buffalo jump Wednesday morning. Lotton Construction and Lakeside Excavation Inc. helped install the new center that morning.

A new building is coming together — literally — at the archeological and tourist site just west of Havre.

The new interpretive center is being moved in and erected at the entrance to the Wahkpa Chu'gn Buffalo Jump behind the Holiday Village Mall.

The center is the result of finding a way to save projects funded through a Tourism Infrastructure Improvement Program grant that the H. Earl Clack Memorial Museum Foundation had been about to return to the state.

The bids on the project to upgrade display buildings on the site came back much higher than the $100,000 budget. That was with a $66,000 TIIP grant and $34,000 in matching funds. One of the largest expenses was the requirement that workers be paid Davis-Bacon wages.

With help from Bear Paw Development Corp. and the state tourism department, plans were revised, with TIIP money now going toward the interpretive building and to pay for other interior work.

H. Earl Clack Memorial Museum Foundation money was used for the exhibit buildings, counting toward the required grant matching funds.

The 32-foot by 12-foot interpretive center was built by participants in the YouthBuild Program hosted at Montana State University-Northern, with TIIP funds buying the materials to build the center.

John Brumley, the archaeologist who discovered the site in the 1960s while a youth, and his wife, Anna, the manager of the site, have said they plan to build the displays in the center over the rest of the winter and next spring once the building is completed.