The Bar U Ranch National Historic Site celebrated its 20th anniversary Thursday

Mike McLean with the Bar U says the buildings and the size of the site haven't changed over that time, but access has.

"The number of buildings is the same, of course the site is the same, it's 367 acres, I was there for the grand opening many moons ago and I think the biggest difference that you notice is when you were doing tours at that time it was a guide physically taking people down the gravel road and pointing to the buildings because you could not go into any of the buildings," McLean says. "Nothing had been done, nothing had been stabilized or restored."

He says the Friends of the Bar U group really stepped up and put on a big day of cattle and cowboys showing how they work the  land and now many of the buildings are open and are in use.

"The workhorse barn, of course it's up for federal infrastructure money to get some restoration on it, but it';s still our base of operations to run our teams of horses out of," he says. "The The harness repair shop, there's a guy in there doing leather work, the cookhouse, yes it's a display but it's operating and they're actually doing baking on that wood stove."

McLean says they had over 20,000 visitors last year and are on track to do the same or better this year.

The site received a $4 million boost Thursday from the federal government for further enhancements.

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