The Heritage Museum is a tribute to Libby’s community spirit and commitment to preserving its history. Constructed almost entirely by volunteer labor, the log structure celebrates the region’s forests and logging roots. Community members began imagining a museum in 1971 to display the paintings and extensive artifact collection of Libby landscape artist and collector Roy Porter. The nation’s upcoming bicentennial provided additional motivation to build the museum. Porter’s son Doug became president of the museum’s volunteer board, which also envisioned creating a repository for other local history collections as well as a community archive. Floyd Lucas, a structural engineer who worked for the US Army Corps of Engineers at the Libby Dam, designed the Neotraditional Rustic style museum. The unusual, twelve-sided building features a 130-foot-diameter first floor and a 30-foot-diameter cupola. National Forest landscape architect Wayne Tlusty created a site plan. Other community members dug the well and excavated the basement while electrical engineer John Davidson, who also worked for the Corps, designed and completed the museum’s electrical system. Local loggers felled and skidded between eight and nine hundred larch and lodgepole pines donated to the county for the project by the Kootenai National Forest. Donated trucks delivered the logs to the site, where still other volunteers hand-peeled and notched the logs to prepare them for assembly. Libby High School students built the large front doors in their shop class. The building’s shell was completed as planned by the July 4, 1976, bicentennial. The museum’s forty-one interior exhibits opened to the public two years later.
]]>Libby’s mining roots extended back to the 1860s, and after the railroad arrived in 1892, the town attracted additional investors. These included Boston capitalist James A. Coram, who thought the community was ready for a luxury hotel. Coram and his partners hired the Des Moines, Iowa, architectural firm of Liebbe, Nourse and Rasmussen to design the three-story building. Contractors broke ground in 1898. An economic downturn stalled construction, and the hotel stood framed under a three-story roof but otherwise remained unfinished for a decade. In 1909, local businessmen C. E. Lukens and John Town purchased the building. The creation of Lincoln County that year no doubt motivated their investment. Finishing the luxury hotel was part of a mini-building boom that also brought electricity, concrete sidewalks, and an expanded water system to Libby, as the community vied to become the county seat. Portland contractor and architect Guy Manning revised the original plans to add modern amenities. Completed at an estimated cost of $35,000, the Coram opened March 1910. Soon after, the hotel was renamed Hotel Libby, and the “show hotel” became the town’s social center, even housing Libby’s first bank and, later, the public library from 1923 to 1936. Between 1946 and 1949 many changes were made in an effort to update the hotel, including covering the original façade with locally produced siding and the addition of a neon sign. Prominent local artist Roy Porter was commissioned to paint three large landscapes that still grace the lobby today.
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