Live History Days brings visitors to Miracle of America Museum

The Empire Builder, its Omaha Orange and Pullman Green paint job gleaming in the morning sun, flew down the tracks and leaned into the curves with engineer Zach Wild keeping it running smooth. Okay, so it was a smaller replica of the Empire Builder, but Wild had cars full of happy little kids on board.

This Empire Builder is at the Miracle of America Museum in Polson, and Wild is museum CEO Gil Mangels’ great grandson, who came from Beaverton, Ore., to help out with Live History Days, held July 15-16.

Wild, 16, said he's learned a lot from Mangels, who taught him to weld. A model train buff, Wild also builds movie props and is currently replicating props from “Ghostbusters.”

Mangels was loading up kids and adults for a ride around the grounds in a truck from Desert Storm, equipped with tank treads. As the truck rumbled around a corner, a one-cylinder water pump chugged away. Passengers saw beauty shops, a motel, washing machines, a helicopter, the endoskeletons of planes, gasoline signs and pumps, vintage and antique cars, motorcycles, and bicycles, and so much more.

Tucked in a shady barn sat Don Safford, knapping a piece of obsidian. He’s been knapping for 18 years, after 31 years as a fisherman in Alaska.

Safford, who lives in Hot Springs, had a display of different kinds of obsidian, such as pumpkin, golden sheen, silver sheen, rainbow, and many more, formed by volcanoes 60 to 100 million years ago. Safford said about the only place you can get obsidian is Glass Butte, Ore.

“It’s on Bureau of Land Management land there, and you can only get 200 pounds,” Safford explained. “Used to be, you could take as much as you wanted.”

The Nez Perce used to bring obsidian to trade with other Native American tribes, he said. Obsidian is also found in Yellowstone Park, and obsidian from there was traded all the way to Texas.

He was also a font of information about atlatls, which he makes self-loading atlatls and throws competitively. Atlatls were used for 20,000 years before bows and arrows came along.

Other crafters included a leather worker who had scraps of leather for people to practice stamping.

Also wandering the grounds was Dez Gashler, Mangel’s granddaughter. In two years, her family will be moving to Polson, where she’ll become the assistant CEO of the Miracle of America Museum to learn from grandfather. She said her family is excited about the move.

Dez, who makes summer visits to the museum, said her favorite display is the Paul Bunyan, a 65-foot tugboat that’s incorporated into the museum’s facade.

“I slept there under the stars,” she said, when the boat was still open to the sky.

Not open to the sky is the inside of the museum, where countless collections and exhibits boggle the mind. It was jam-packed for Live History Days.

It’s appropriate that the Miracle of America Museum is located on Memory Lane, on the southern side of Polson – it’s a great spot to relive the past and make your own memories.