Home

History

Exhibits

Events

Festival
of the Arts

Educational Programs

Community Programs

Foundation

Board Members & Staff

Membership

Roof Project

Directions

Livingston Model Railroad Club

Livingston Museum Association

Railroads played a critical role in the growth of the American West and modern Montana. Three of the five transcontinental railroads ran through this state.  Rails across the Rockies is our primary museum exhibit, telling the story of regional railroad history in a variety of sub-exhibits.

For most of its first century, the U.S. was a society hugging the Atlantic Coast and spreading tentatively west of the Appalachians, but after the Civil War, interest in the sparsely populated West grew as railroads, the newest technology in transportation, inched toward the Pacific.

In 1869, the first transcontinental railroad crossed the nation through its center, and the journey from East to West became a relatively safe and comfortable trip of a few days instead of the once arduous cross-country horse trek or lengthy voyage around South America.

Now the race was on to tie the rest of the remote West to the centers of population. In 1883, the Northern Pacific Railroad connected its eastern and western divisions, west of Livingston, forever binding Montana to the population centers in the Midwest and on the west coast. Between 1883 and 1909, two more transcontinental rail links crossed Montana.

The railroads needed to fill both their passenger and freight trains and thus came to place a high priority on convincing settlers to move west, as well as on finding and promoting tourist destinations.

Livingston was a key center for the Northern Pacific, both because it lay midway between the NP's endpoints at Seattle and St. Paul and because it was the first railroad gateway to Yellowstone National Park. Livingston also sat at the beginning of the Rocky Mountain passes the NP's workers had paid so dearly to cross.

Once the railroad entered the mountains, the problem of steep grades, tunnels, and snowbound passes replaced the relative ease of crossing the Great Plains, both in construction and in operations.

As you pass through these exhibits, you can begin to appreciate the extraordinary people who by skill, brawn, and often sheer will power created one of the greatest engineering feats in human history, -- the rails across the Rockies.    

Film in Montana

Successor to the popular "2001:  A Montana Film Odyssey", this updated collection displays and narrates the surprising wealth of filmmaking history in the area, from well-known successes like "The Horse Whisperer" and "A River Runs Through It" to smaller productions and commercial shoots.   Filmmaking in the state has attracted interest from economic as well as artistic angles and become an active element at nearby Montana State University.  This exhibit spans a host of productions and talented workers to reveal a surprisingly significant ingredient in regional culture.  
 

The Livingston Depot in History and Architecture

On Track:  The Railroad Photographs of Warren McGee

     After a highly successful opener in Helena at the Montana Historical Society, which produced it, this great exhibit comes to McGee's home town of Livingston.  It features photographs (culled from a collection of over forty thousand images) spanning the decades from the early years when he made plans to shoot every engine in the NP fleet, to the anti-merger fight in the 70's, to the present day.  The photo collection is complemented with both regular large McGee prints hosted each year and also various objects rounding out the exhibit theme. 

     In addition to photos from the Northern Pacific Railway and later the Burlington Northern for which McGee worked, the collection includes photos from the Great Northern, Union Pacific, Milwaukee Road, and other lesser know railroad lines in Montana and surrounding states.  The MHS's Jennifer Jeffries Thomas commented,
“Warren was and is an amazing documentarian and chronicler – perhaps that comes from the attention to detail that railroaders have a passion for.  He recorded with precision each exposure, noting dates, places, engine numbers, people’s names, and other significant information."  Railroad historians and enthusiasts who have seen parts of the collection say it is one of the best in the nation. “In the world of railroad history and photographs, it is well-known and of premier quality,” Thompson said.  
Major funding for the exhibit's creation was provided by the Northern Pacific Railway
Historical Association and the Montana Department of Transportation.  

     Further exhibit-related events may appear on the Depot's website calendar as they develop. 
 

Top

 

Calendar of Events		Map