Period Fort

Start your visit with a self-guided tour through the museum and interior galleries. Enjoy a short documentary that explains the history of the fort.

Following the galleries lets you travel back in time to the late 1800s. The ‘Voices from the Past’ audio programs in each room present the various scoundrels and lawmen who called Fort Whoop-Up home. The fully furnished rooms provide insight as to what life at the fort would have been like.

 
Thunderchief Gallery

Offering a first-hand perspective into the Blackfoot Culture, this room interprets the lives and ceremony of the primary customers of Fort Whoop-Up through a vast collection of plains culture artifacts and displays. Many of the artifacts in this room come from the descendants of Thunder Chief, a war chief who took part in The Belly River Battle, which occurred in Indian Battle Park, the west side of the city, and the original Fort Whoop Up.

 
Crowshoe Gallery

Enjoy this gallery displaying the evolution of life in the Belly River Area. Travel back in time from the ranch era and end of Fort Whoop-Up to before it existed out on the banks of the Belly River. Learn about the history of the site and some of the unique terms and items at the fort viewing our robe trade video before having a chance to view them first hand in the period fort itself. Exhibits include Blackfoot transportation, transport on the Whoop Up trail, plains tribes regalia, eagle catcher diorama, Blackfoot winter camp, buffalo diorama, rendezvous period trade items, the North West Mounted Police and the 1870 Belly River Battle of the Cree and Blackfoot.

 
Shockley Firearms Gallery

We hope to display the firearms collection at a new location soon.

View our vast collection of firearms in this gallery, with over five hundred pieces. Take a walk back through time in the evolution of firearms with many pieces that would have been used in the fur trade era, and those from well before and even some from after.