County spends $115k in ARPA funds on Western Legacy Center

Jefferson County will spend $115,719 in pandemic relief funds on kickstarting the planned Western Legacy Center in Whitehall to help achieve a targeted spring 2022 opening.

The County Commission formally approved the expenditure at its Nov. 16 meeting, but the use of that amount for the combination visitor center and local retail space had for months been included in the county’s plan of how to spend its approximately $2.4 million in funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

The Western Legacy Center is a planned 9,000-square-foot facility that county and project leaders say will house retail space dedicated almost exclusively to local- and Montana-made goods, as well as interactive exhibits including gold panning and mining simulations, animated displays of Native history and Montana’s role in Europeans’ development of the West, 3D visualizations of rodeo events, hologram exhibits, and “futuristic displays showcasing Montana’s exciting role in the innovation age,” according to an October news release from the center. Conceived before the pandemic and originally intended for Boulder, the county eventually found a home for the center in the Roberts Building, on Whitetail Road at the northwest corner of Whitehall’s interchange with Interstate 90.