Sol Martin was covered in dirt and dust after a sudden Wyoming wind whipped through farmlands surrounding the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center. The root cellar, which has been undergoing preservation planning and construction since 2013, took the worst of the sudden storm.

Chunks of dirt and an occasional piece of bark from decades old lodgepole pines supporting the underground structure’s roof fell and mixed with a fine yellow dust caught in the wind. It’s not the ideal working conditions. Until the roof is fully repaired, Martin’s small crew from his Montana company, Zoula Masonry Services, face working in the cavern often in masks and helmets.

But it’s the price they are willing to pay to keep the World War II internment camp facility built by Japanese prisoners as original as possible. Construction began on the root cellar in the summer of 1943, as part of the camp’s agriculture program. That year, the incarcerated laborers of the agriculture program accomplished what was known as the “Heart Mountain Miracle,” turning a dry Wyoming desert into verdant farmland in less than a year.

The root cellar is more than 300 feet long, having 30,000 cubic feet of storage capacity. The preservation project hopes to retain about 90% of its original construction materials prior to being finished for public display, Martin said.

“We have done some structural upgrades, including putting concrete posts in the bottom of these columns. And as you might notice, up top we've got some structural steel, that is obviously not historic, but is a code upgrade so that it's safe to walk through here,” he said.

The root cellar was designed to have a truck delivering internees’ harvested food going through it. Everything within sight is original, with the exception of five columns, three rafters, some roof planks and cladding on the raft walkway walls.

During the center’s annual pilgrimage, construction was temporarily halted so those attending the annual pilgrimage could get a first peek. Masks were suggested by the team to help keep visitors from inhaling the thick dust.

Martin is the lead contractor on the project after submitting the lowest bid to transform the long neglected structure into the newest addition to the center, which recently became affiliated with the Smithsonian Institute.

After leading former surviving internees and others attending the pilgrimage, the center’s Director of Interpretation and Preservation, Cally Steussy, said the root cellar is closely tied to the story of agriculture at Heart Mountain. The story includes threats to the camp's food supplies in the early months, through the completion of the irrigation canals and the incredibly successful farming program, before the end of internments of Japanese American citizens. The story then looks forward into the homesteading era and the farms of the present day, she said.

“It touches on the way that Japanese Americans became targets of anger through the spreading of rumors, the incredible successes they achieved under immense pressure, and the legacy that the camp left behind in the Big Horn Basin,” Steussy said.

In the first year of the farming program, Heart Mountain produced over 2 million pounds of produce. Current day passersby may have noticed the addition of a yurt to the construction site, and, most noticeably, little wooden structures poking up above ground. They were vents that use the prevailing winds in the area to circulate air and keep the contents from molding.

The aim of the current phase is to get the root cellar to a point where we can safely open the front portion to the public — including being fully ADA accessible and up to safety codes with an emergency exit.

The center also aims to stabilize the full length of the cellar to prevent further collapse, said the foundation’s Executive Director Aura Sunada Newlin. After they complete the public access phase, which is funded by a $852,000  grant by the National Park Service through the Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS) program, “We hope to install an exhibit inside the cellar and an interpretive walking trail around it,” she said.

Assuming that the weather cooperates and that the center is able to raise the additional $425K in matching funds required by the JACS grant, Newlin said they hope to be able to open the cellar for public access during summer 2025.

Due to safety and vandalism concerns, the cellar will be open for guided tours only.

“Not something that the public can just walk into on their own,” she said.

“The exhibit itself will be a longer project. It will be a few years before that could be ready.”

Zoula Masonry Services was also the lead contractor for the smokestack rehabilitation, which his company started in 2012.

“The smokestack was really challenging,” Martin said. It was a financially, logistically and emotionally challenging project. It was a trial for me that made me gain just a ton of respect for the memory of the people that had to endure the hardship here because I went through a whole season of hardship, and to come to work every day, knowing that it's going to be hot, knowing that it's going to be dusty, knowing that we've got to move to 1,000-pound blocks.”

A local family donated the two root cellars and the surrounding land to the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation in 2011. The center started the root cellar project soon after, the most recent phase of restoration work was originally planned for 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic, related labor shortages and contractor unavailability prevented the work from commencing until summer 2023. In the meantime, inflation and shortages led to sharply elevated costs for both labor and materials.

The cellar’s condition had also deteriorated slightly due to water seepage and settling earth, found in the initial hydrology report, while previously undiscovered structural factors in the cellar itself made the 2023 phase more complicated than initially assessed.

“I didn't want them to fix something that was going to fail because of the soils,” Martin said. “The soil doesn't have any real structure here.”

He is proud of the work he and his crew are doing.

“Knowing that I'm responsible for bringing this back together gives me a real sense of honor, and pride,” he said. “How fortunate am I to be leading a project that's unique to the entire world.”