The Heritage & Research Center (HRC), located at 200 Old Yellowstone Trail in historic Gardiner, Montana, is a state-of-the-art facility that is home to Yellowstone National Park’s museum collection, archives, research library, historian, archeology lab, and herbarium.

This 32,000-square-foot, facility is located on seven acres adjacent to the Gardiner School. It now houses almost 3,000 linear feet of historic records, 90,000 photographic prints and negatives, 20,000 books and manuscripts, 300,000 cultural and natural science specimens, over 35,000 archeological artifacts and approximately 10,000 plant specimens. The HRC provides a 500% increase (from 1,642 to 8,017 square feet) in library and archives space including storage, processing areas, reading rooms, and offices; and a 700% increase (from 1,206 to 8,906 square feet) in museum spaces including storage, processing areas, and offices. It was not only designed to improve space for the collections, including room for 25 years of growth, but also to improve access and ease working conditions for employees, visitors, and researchers; increase security; better accommodate tours; and showcase rotating exhibits.

Excerpts from Yellowstone Science Vol.12, Number 4 Part I & Part II

Public tours of the HRC will be every Wednesdays at 10am, beginning May 28th through September 3rd, 2008. Space is limited to ten participants, so please call (307) 344-2664 to reserve a slot.

Hours of Operation:

The facility is open, Monday – Friday, 8am-5pm and closed weekends and federal holidays.
Library Hours: Tuesday-Friday 9-4pm
Archives and Museum Collections: By appointment only.

Please be advised that the herbarium and archeology labs do not maintain an open door policy for researchers due to field work. For general information regarding these programs, please see their respective links on the upper portion of this webpage.

Research:

Researchers are encouraged to complete their preliminary research at other archives, libraries, and/or museum collections with a broad topical focus before approaching the holdings of Yellowstone National Park (YNP). YNP has limited reference staff and resources that must be made available to researchers whose work focuses on materials available only at Yellowstone. Access to materials is dependent upon their physical condition and the level of processing to date by the park staff. All research must be done on-site in the museum research room or the library reading room.

Other Repositories Containing Yellowstone National Park Related Collections