Heart Mountain Interpretive Center

06/24/2026

Our interpretive center will be closed Tuesday, June 30, because we're hosting a private event and two bus tours. We'll be open regular hours from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday, June 29, on Wednesday, July 1 and all days afterward. For more information, see our website at

Heart Mountain WWII Japanese American Confinement Site: award-winning interpretive center & National Historic Landmark site.

06/24/2026

Our Collections Manager, Rachyl Soloai, will present at the Remembrance Awakened Speaker Series on July 8, 9:30–10:30 PM (MDT)
For more details, see the linked post.

The second talk of our Remembrance Awakened: Speaker Series is titled "Preserving the Incarceration: How Museum Collections Keep the Story Alive".

Featuring the archivist for the Japanese American National Museum, Jamie Hendricks, Heart Mountain's Collections Manager, Rachyl Soloai, and Pearl Harbor National Memorial's Museum Technician, Mikael Fox, this talk will answer the question: "How are artifacts still telling incarceration stories decades later?"

Learn from the keepers of history - the collections managers, archivists, and museum techs helping to interpret the history of incarceration sites across the United States for this special discussion.

Registration is required to attend this event.

EVENT DETAILS:
July 8, 5:30-6:30pm HST
Link to register: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88481179326

06/23/2026

Wednesday, July 15, is WyoGives Day. We're raising money for our root cellar exhibit and restoration. Sam Mihara is matching the first $50,000 in donations and we're participating in the Hughes Charitable Foundation's Incentive Pool. This generous $1,000,000 pool will be available to boost donations from every donor who contributes to the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation via this platform. Thank you in advance for your generosity and support!

I’m ready to support Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation on July 15, 2026 during WyoGives. Learn more about Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation and all the other organizations participating in WyoGives.

06/22/2026

The new issue of Kokoro Kara magazine has been published. We hope everyone enjoys it.

06/19/2026

Led by Sybil Kawano, our museum educator, the weeklong teacher workshops backed by the Walk Family foundations were a tremendous success thanks to the hard work of our team at the Mineta-Simpson Institute at Heart Mountain. Thirty teachers from around the country learned about the Japanese American incarceration so they could return home and share this knowledge with their students. We're grateful for their participation. Thanks everyone!

06/19/2026

Lena Newlin, sister of our executive director, reflects on her family’s experience in the Japanese American incarceration on Juneteenth.

In Our Own Words – Spoken Word & Songs will feature the work of Lena Newlin, Christopher D. Sims and J Shogren at the University of Wyoming Neltje Center on June 19.

06/19/2026

It was an inspirational day for our Walk teacher workshop participants Thursday, as they visited the site by Heart Mountain, learned about what happened to the barracks after the camp closed and tried homemade mochi. We’re grateful for the support of the Walk family, who made the first year of this program so successful.

06/18/2026

William "Buffalo Bill" Cody had a dream of creating an irrigation network that would turn much of Park County into an agricultural paradise. Many of his dreams faltered, but the Buffalo Bill dam and reservoir west of Cody were key criteria in the location of the War Relocation Authority camp at Heart Mountain. Our Walk workshop participants visited there this morning to learn more about this connection.

06/18/2026

Heart Mountain descendant Ellen Kamei is part of a new generation of Japanese American political leadership. The mayor of Mountain View is tackling multiple challenges. She considers her paternal grandfather Kenzo Kamei an inspiration.

Roots and representation — former Mountain View mayor Ellen Kamei draws on her multiracial heritage to lead with empathy and community focus.

06/17/2026

Cally Steussy explains the work done to restore our historic root cellar, while collections manager Rachel Soloai shows participants in our Walk educator workshops some of the collections stored at our site. Both are essential to understanding the history of the Japanese America incarceration at Heart Mountain.