Some 149,000 items from the historic Little Bighorn Battlefield - including silk battle flags, documents, uniforms, medals and spent bullets - are being brought to Tucson for safekeeping.
Here's why: Storage facilities at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument were outdated and put the artifacts at risk of loss by deterioration, fire or flood.
They're being stored at the Western Archaeological and Conservation Center here until new facilities can be built at the monument in Crow Agency, Mont.
The monument memorializes the June 25-26, 1876, battle in which 263 U.S. soldiers - including Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer - died while fighting several thousand Indian warriors.
"Our storage area in the basement of the monument visitor center was too small and inadequate" for the invaluable collection, said Barbara Johnson, acting superintendent of the monument. "It didn't have adequate humidity or temperature control or adequate fire protection."
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She said about 123,000 historical archive items were brought to Tucson by truck in June, and nearly 26,000 historic specimens arrived this month.
About 160 Little Bighorn ethnographic items will be moved this fall to the Tucson facility, which is operated by the National Park Service and stores items from many parks.
Tef Rodeffer, museum services program manager for the Intermountain Region of the Park Service, said Tucson will be only "a temporary home" for the collection until the monument can build a new facility.
The collection won't be open to the public, Rodeffer said. Even authorized researchers won't have access until next summer.
Johnson said a time frame for a new storage facility at the monument in Montana is uncertain.
"We're talking several years, at least," she said.
Here are excerpts from a "frequently asked questions" document prepared by Little Bighorn Monument officials.
Q: What will it cost to move the museum collection and archives?
A: The monument and WACC estimate the collections' temporary relocation to the center will cost about $220,000.
Q: Why can't the Park Service use the money it would pay to move and care for the collections to build new storage or improve existing storage instead?
A: The relocation funds are specifically earmarked for the move and are not part of the monument's budget or resources for any other purpose. The Park Service has determined that renovating the existing facility would not meet all the collection's needs. Construction of a new visitor center is the desired goal.
Q: Why is WACC a good place to put the collection and archives?
A: The center is a state-of-the-art facility operated by the Park Service's Intermountain Region, an eight-state, 91-park administrative division that includes Little Bighorn Battlefield and the state of Montana. About 10 million archives and objects from 71 Western parks are stored there.
Q: Does moving the collection mean that the display cases in the battlefield visitor center will be empty?
A: Park museum displays will not be affected by the move, and the amount of material on exhibit will remain the same.
Contact reporter Doug Kreutz at dkreutz@azstarnet.com or at 573-4192.
