History finds a home

When Tom Tompson first walked into the National Conservation Legacy Center, the showcase of the National Museum of Forest Service History, he froze.

“Your heart says, ‘Wow,’” said Thompson, a retired Forest Service deputy chief and past president of the museum’s board of directors.

The center in Missoula, Montana, awes many visitors who approach the building. Its 13 tree-like wood columns branch toward a folded roof that rises and falls like a forest canopy and echoes the view of the Northern Rocky Mountains. They all stand as a reminder of the immense responsibility and long history of an agency born of a conservation ethic that called for producing “from the forest whatever it can yield for the service of man.” Read more…