At times, it must have seemed the journey would never end.

The Duffy family, bound for a new life in Kalispell, had left Missoula by stagecoach around noon Dec. 24, 1891. They then boarded a steamship in Polson and started the slow trip up Flathead Lake — a trek made even slower by the late December ice built up on the water. Crew members had to break up the ice to ease the ship up the lake.

When the Duffys finally landed in Demersville, they boarded another stage, this time in a raging blizzard. At long last, the family arrived in Kalispell.

When they reached their hotel around midnight, a Christmas Eve party was in full swing. Little Margaret, just 3 years old, begged to wear her new red party dress, and, despite her weariness, her mother dug it out of their trunk.

That dress, a celebration of an arduous journey’s end and a reminder of the hardships early settlers went through to reach their new home, is on display at the Museum at Central School. It’s part of the museum’s new “History of the Flathead Valley” exhibition, which opens Friday.

The exhibition is the culmination of six years of planning, executive director Gil Jordan said. A committee formed in 2007 to begin discussing what should be included in such an display.

But the dream of creating an exhibit detailing the Flathead’s recent history goes back even further.

 “I got here in January 2005, and almost from the day I walked in the door, people were saying, ‘We need an exhibit on the history of the Flathead Valley,’” Jordan said.

The museum already had exhibits on American Indians of the Northwest, the valley’s timber industry, and writer and politician Frank Bird Linderman, but there was no overarching display detailing how Europeans settled the valley.

The committee met for years to discuss what should be included in the exhibit.

“It took the better part of six years to agree on what the history of the valley is and what part of the story to tell,” Jordan said.

In the end, the committee settled on several broad themes, such as agriculture, early settlers and recreation, to tell the valley’s story. They then found vignettes to bring those themes to life, focusing on stories they could illustrate with artifacts, such as Margaret Duffy’s little red dress.

The Flathead’s history is somewhat unique in the United States, Jordan said, because it was settled so late.

“The valley is one of the last places to be settled by Europeans,” he said. “It was hard to get here; we’re surrounded by mountains on three sides and the lake to the south.”

American Indians had been in the area for thousands of years, but Europeans didn’t settle the valley until the 1880s, he said.

“It’s recent history, ‘civilization-wise,’” he said.

 In addition to more than 50 committee meetings, building the exhibition required funding. The nonprofit museum didn’t have the money to create the display it envisioned.

Jordan began applying for grants in 2007. The museum finally was awarded one in 2011: a $32,000 Tourism Infrastructure Investment Program grant from the state Department of Commerce’s Office of Tourism.

“”We finally broke through with that TIIP grant,” Jordan said. “That’s what put everything into high gear.”

The grant uses bed-tax money to support projects that promote tourism in Montana. Jordan said the museum’s exhibit was a perfect fit for the grant.

“It made sense, especially for out-of-area visitors who want to get a sense of the whole valley’s history,” he said.

With the grant, the Museum at Central School was able to hire Wyatt Design, a Helena-based exhibit designer that already had built a few small displays for the museum. The company helped transform the room that had housed a temporary Flathead history display into a venue that would better highlight a new exhibit.

The old exhibition was dark, cluttered and too busy to allow visitors to spend time browsing the artifacts and information, Jordan said. The new exhibit is cleaner, lighter and better designed to allow people to linger and learn about the valley’s past.

“It’s the most ambitious project we’ve done in 13 years,” Jordan said. “We’re excited.”

Kristi Albertson, editor of This Week in the Flathead, may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.