Rudyard sets party for new tractor museum

Havre Daily News staff

The Rudyard museum volunteers are inviting people to a special celebration Friday in honor of the museum complex’ latest addition — a tractor museum.

Lila Redding said she successfully applied for a grant to buy a new building to house restored farm equipment that has been sitting in people’s shops and garages, and the new Farm Building is housing a potluck celebration — costumes are optional — starting at 6 p.m. with a dance to the music of Eric Sundgren starting at 8 p.m.

Redding said the 40-by-80-foot building was put in behind the Rudyard Dinosaur Museum, and the museum volunteers expect the equipment to be moved in starting next week.

She applied for a grant to expand existing museums through the Montana Tourism Board, which awarded the Rudyard museums $40,000, enough to buy the building.

The Rudyard museum system has continued to expand over the last three decades. The Rudyard Historical Society, which formed in 1994, first opened The Depot Museum, which houses local artifacts and written histories covering Joplin, Inverness, Rudyard, Hingham, Gildford and Kremlin in a building that originally was a Great Northern Railway depot.

The society next opened its Dinosaur Museum, in conjunction with the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, in 2006. The museum houses multiple displays including local artifacts, fossils and dinosaur castings, and work is continuing as “more are being dug” up in the area, the museum website says.

In 2007, another museum — this with international ties — opened. Micheal Fleissner from Germany had passed through Rudyard while visiting the United States and stopped at the town’s annual in-gathering. He saw antique automobiles on display at the Depot Museum, and later purchased a building in Rudyard, the Phillips Building, to house Rudyard’s Hi-Line Vintage Auto Museum.

Redding said everyone is invited to come participate in the celebration of the latest museum in Rudyard, the Farm Building, with proceeds of free-will donations going to the Rudyard Senior Center to help with utilities and maintenance costs.

People are invited to bring food for the potluck, a hot dish for people whose last names start with letters A-H, a salad for letters I-P and a dessert for letters Q-Z.