Heart Mountain’s restored root cellar will be the focus of a $338,883 grant from the National Park Service’s Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS) program. The grant supports the development and installation of a permanent exhibit inside the massive root cellar that was used to hold the produce grown on the camp’s farm by incarcerated farmers during World War II. 

The new exhibit will be installed by the end of 2027 and will tell the story of the incarcerated farmers who made the high desert soil of Heart Mountain bloom, said Aura Sunada Newlin, executive director of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation.

“Enthusiasm for the root cellar project has been steadily growing as people get sneak peeks of this magnificent underground structure,” Newlin said in a release. “We cannot wait to formally open it for tours, and to start developing this first-of-its-kind exhibit.”

When the almost 11,000 Japanese Americans were first incarcerated at Heart Mountain in 1942, they lacked water to irrigate their crops, and the prisoners were forced to eat substandard Army rations. When the incarcerees completed the irrigation channel to the camp site, they were able to grow enough food to feed the Heart Mountain population.

The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation (HMWF) started restoring the root cellar almost a decade ago after a local homesteader family donated the property. Thanks to the support of private donors as well as grants from the Park County Travel Council, the Aratani Foundation, and the National Park Service, the cellar will soon be restored to a point where visitors to the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center can experience the cellar’s grandeur.

The foundation expects that guided tours will become available in early 2026, according to the Thursday press release.

For more information, call the center at (307) 754-8000 or email info@heartmountain.org.