

What’s on offer
The museum, gallery, and theatre are in the main Heart Mountain Interpretive Center. Next door or within 5 minutes’ walk, you can view a redeveloped barracks and meander around the old camp hospital, guard tower and memorial. I was fortunate enough to enter the barracks (soon to be opened to the public). Inside, the stark nature has been left intentionally bleak, so to reflect the conditions Japanese Americans experienced when they arrived.
Rotating gallery
The Heart Mountain Interpretive Center has its own curated in-house gallery. Throughout the year, a variety of projects appear on its walls, as the shows rotate. The museum produces many of them, using their archives. Other times, they host creative works from across the US. The shows have come in a variety of forms over the years, from quilt-making and quilt displays to photography shows, as well as shows on specific people – all reflecting the Japanese incarceration.
Overall
The Heart Mountain Interpretive Center has big plans for the future. They’re working with people across the United States to bring in more confinement artifacts, research resources, and buildings (yes, actual WWII buildings). Better still, they plan to restore a root cellar, which I was able to visit – very cool. This along with the future shows and exhibitions are good cause to be excited. If they’re half as memorable as what I saw on my visit, they’ll make you think for days to come – and my bet is that they might be even better.
I was told my old house was from the barracks of heart mountain. My dad homesteaded a place outside of Shoshoni Wy. This was in 1948. I was born in 1952. Could you tell me anything about this. It’s very interesting. I’m in Texas. The house is still there. Been remodeled a few times. My dad passed in 1961 so he can’t tell me anything.
Hi Vicky,
We reached out to the folks at Heart Mountain Interpretive Center to see if they could provide any insight, and here’s what we found out!
Yes, many of the post-WWII homesteaders had houses that started as barrack buildings from Heart Mountain! After the camp closed and the land was distributed to homesteaders, the buildings of the camp were still available, so the Bureau of Reclamation offered them to the homesteaders for purchase. The barracks were very cheap – as little as one dollar for half a barrack – but moving them to the homesteader’s land was left to the individual homesteaders. They used them for barns, sheds, and houses. Once you know what you’re looking for, you can still see many of the old barracks all over the region!
If you want more detail, the second edition of the book Moving Walls has several chapters dedicated to what happened to the barracks buildings after the camp closed. We’re also working on putting together an exhibit about the barracks that will be online soon.