Effectively immediately, all federal employees will enjoy free admission to the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center for the duration of the government shutdown. 

Free admission also applies to family members of federal employees living in the same household. 

The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, in a release, announced it wants to express its solidarity with the federal employees who work in the Wyoming-Montana area as well as those around the country. 

By design, the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center and its facilities are part of the independent Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. The foundation’s founders wanted to tell the story of the Japanese American incarceration without the involvement of the government that created the incarceration in the first place. 

This independence also means that the center stays open if the federal government closes. That includes the Mineta-Simpson Institute, which was created to help perpetuate the values shown in public life by Secretary Norman Mineta and Sen. Alan Simpson, who first met as Boy Scouts at Heart Mountain during World War II. 

“Mineta, a Democrat from California, and Simpson, a Republican from Wyoming, mastered the art of bipartisan comity and compromise during their extensive tenures in Congress and the Cabinet of two presidents,” the foundation said in the release. “We encourage members of Congress of both parties to follow their example.”