Montana Boone & Crockett Headquarters Getting Much-Needed Repairs
Anyone who's walked along the Beartracks Bridge in Missoula has likely noticed the red brick towers of the old Milwaukee Railroad Depot on the south side of the Clark Fork River. It's a structure that still stands out despite its age - the Depot was built in 1910. It also serves as the national headquarters of the Boone and Crockett Club.
In February of 2022, Boone and Crockett submitted this preservation permit to the City of Missoula for repairs the aging building needs, most notably the roof which used to have Spanish mission-style clay tiles. The club says at some point those were replaced by these shingles.
Jodi Bishop, the Boone and Crockett Club's Development Program Manager says other repairs the building needs are water-damaged soffits (the jutting undersides of roofs) and replacing the aluminum downspouts from the roof with tasteful new galvanized metal ones, which will match the exterior of the old Depot.
Well when we bought it in 1992 we did a lot of renovations on the inside and a little bit on the outside, but it really never had any extensive repairs done on the outside or cleaning. I think the windows and doors had been painted over at one time or another but nothing really like we've done.
Bishop told us that the repairs to the Depot have been put on hold through the remainder of winter 2022, but will resume once the weather clears up next year. Here's what the crew has done so far:
We're actually part way through. They worked all summer on cleaning...we didn't realize how dirty the building was. So they did all the cleaning, cleaned the entire building, which is huge! But before they did that they did brick repair and masonry repair that needed to be done. There were holes all over so they filled all the holes and repaired the soffits. So all of that was done this summer.
Bishop also updated us on how the roof repairs are going:
At some point, somebody had taken off the original clay tile and replaced it with a shingle roof. We are going to put it back the way it was, so it's going to have the Spanish clay tile on the whole thing again. So the roof is 30 years old and that shingle stuff isn't supposed to last that long. We're lucky we haven't had many leaks, we've had a few but it needs to be replaced...we want to put it back to the way it was, so that's what we're going to do.
Bishop says the club will do its best to keep the museum open during the repairs and is looking forward to welcoming more visitors as well as members to the Boone and Crockett Historical Center and museum.