WaterWorks Art Museum

The WaterWorks Art Museum in Miles City is housed in the town's old water treatment plant, in a park beside the Yellowstone River west of downtown. The plant opened in 1910 or 1911, depending on the source, and supplied the town's drinking water for more than 60 years. River water was pumped through holding tanks into concrete settling basins. When a new plant opened in 1975, residents bought the empty building and spent two years digging silt out of the basins by hand. The museum, first called the Custer County Art and Heritage Center, opened in 1977. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 as the Miles City Waterworks Building and Pumping Plant Park.

The galleries are the old settling basins themselves, windowless concrete rooms that are the reason to visit even before you look at the art. The museum puts on about seven changing exhibitions a year. In January it hosts a juried show, and part of it then travels to 13 Montana counties.

The permanent collection is strongest in early photography of eastern Montana. It holds prints from as early as 1878 by Robert C. Morrison, L.A. Huffman, Christian Barthelmess, Evelyn Cameron and Edward S. Curtis, including 18 works by Barthelmess. Huffman photographed Miles City and the open range from the 1880s, and Cameron recorded ranch life near Terry, so this is the place to see the region's frontier years through the eyes of the people who lived them. The collection also includes regional painting.

The museum is open Tuesday to Saturday from 9:00 to 17:00, from 30 January to 31 December. It is closed on Sundays and Mondays, for most of January, and during the week between exhibitions, so check its website before driving out. It does not publish an admission price. Allow 45 to 60 minutes. The building is accessible and large-print handouts are available.

The museum is at 85 Water Plant Road, about a mile from the town centre. In Miles City it pairs well with the Range Riders Museum, a large collection on the open-range cattle era a few minutes away on the west edge of town.