NINEPIPES — It is with a "heavy heart" that Bud Jr. and Laurel Cheff have announced the closure of Ninepipes Museum of Early Montana. In a letter dated Dec. 28, 2009 to the members of the museum, Cheff explained the closure as being a fallout of the economic conditions.

"Business has just been so bad for both the Lodge and the museum," Laurel Cheff said in an interview this week. "We were hoping it wasn't going to happen, but it has."

The building the museum is housed in is owned by the Ninepipes Lodge LLC and leased by the museum.

"The lodge has not been able to keep its note payments current this year," Bud Cheff wrote in his letter.  "The primary lender…[has] sold our note to a bank in Texas who hold the second note. We are not current in our payments to them."

The museum's collection is not part of the foreclosure, Cheff wrote. "The museum itself is a non-profit entity…[and] the museum is not without a building to display its many artifacts."

If the lodge is sold in a private sale, the museum would be saved, Laurel Cheff said. "If it is sold in a foreclosure, the museum is gone."

Laurel Cheff estimates it would take about $1 million to keep Ninepipes Museum's doors open.