RITZVILLE — The sign in the lobby reads “The best journeys lead you home,” but Dr. Don Sebesta plans to take you around the word first.

The Othello general surgeon has been shaping, molding, preparing and working on a dream for a little over two decades now. When the doors finally open to the Lasting Legacy Wildlife Museum, it will be a place of wonder where people can see animals from around the globe, animals from North America and animals from down the street.

“Our goal is to teach people geography as well as teach them about animals and what they do,” said Sebesta, who is originally from South Dakota. “Each of the displays will have stuff on the back wall that says, for example, this is an alligator from the swamp south of New Orleans, La., then a little bit about the natural history, and then a little about the swamp and finally about the Cajun people of the area.”

It has been a labor of love that actually began as a trophy room at his personal residence 20 years ago. The idea expanded, the vision grew and now the building at 1729 E. Weber Rd. in Ritzville with its 30-foot ceilings, multiple levels, countless rooms and display houses quite literally thousands of taxidermied animals in handcrafted environments with exquisite attention to detail.

The African room features full-sized elephants, lion prides, hippopotamus, both black and white rhinoceroses, varieties of creatures from the jungles to the plains.

As he walked through the work in progress on Saturday, he rattled off names of various species as if he’d given them all personal names to go with a splendid visual of what you might see if you were touring West Africa.

“I wanted to do it right,” he said. “We’ve gotten a lot of donations of life-sized mounts animals. Sandy (his wife) and I have been back to Africa three times. I’d been back (to Africa) 16 times, so I wanted to be able to present everything people haven’t seen. We wanted to give people a representation of the world.”

That it does. The African room is quite life-like in its portrayal. There is a life-and-death exchange between a treed baboon and a leopard. You can almost hear the baboons in the tree screeching as the leopard makes his move.

“In reality, those three baboons would take that leopard,” Sebesta explained.

Being a big game hunter, many of the animals on display are his own contributions. The Bighorn Sheep room with 52 sheep in all is all his contributions. From North America, the have everything from the plains with the buffalo and antelope to the elk of the forests. There are beaver and otter in the river setting with the elk. One log in the setting is actually one Sebesta brought back from Tonasket.

“I’m most proud of the museum. To put this together, we’ve had to work hard,” he said. “Sandy and I have worked every weekend for 11 years. I knew how I wanted the flow to go. Africa was going to be the biggest display, the sheep was next. Then we kind of build around that.”

The Sebestas plan on lining the walls with hundreds of photographs of their travels to help educate and give people another dynamic. They will have a taxidermist on the second floor so people can see how the animals are prepared for display.

“When we open, we won’t be done. We’ll still be adding as we go along,” Sebesta said.

There isn’t a definitive grand opening date because they still have to address state regulations, but when it does, the Columbia Basin will have a natural history museum, an educational tool, a Lasting Legacy Wildlife Museum that will surpass anything west of the Mississippi.