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  • An award-winning museum

    You’ll spend much of your time at the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center and Mineta-Simpson Institute, a world-class museum, archive, and retreat space situated right where the Heart Mountain Relocation Center confined some 14,000 Japanese Americans from 1942 to 1945. You’ll benefit from its award-winning historical exhibit (curated by seminar leader Eric Muller), ample archives preserving fascinating artifacts, and expert staff.

  • Cody, Wyoming

    It’s the town Willam F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody built! In your free time you’ll have the chance to explore the extraordinary Buffalo Bill Center of the West and its five museums, peruse the shops along Sheridan Avenue, or grab a buffalo (or veggie!) burger in one of Cody’s restaurants. Your group’s final dinner will be at the Irma Hotel (pictured above), named by founder Buffalo Bill for his daughter, in a dining room featuring a cherrywood bar gifted to Buffalo Bill by Queen Victoria.

  • Mountains and high desert

    You’ll find yourself at 5,000 feet in the high and windy Wyoming desert, bordered by the Absaroka mountain range to the west and the badlands of the McCulloch Peaks to the east. To the north, Heart Mountain looms. Sunrises and sunsets are a wonder to witness, and the night sky sparkles with countless stars. You might experience a warm blue sky one day and snow the next!

  • "Visiting Heart Mountain Interpretive Center was a hugely impactful experiential learning experience. The power of place, the wonderful staff, and the thoughtfully constructed exhibits and space made the experience both memorable and important to my development as a lawyer. I truly believe that my experience at Heart Mountain Interpretive Center as a student will help me be a more thoughtful, self-aware, and ethical lawyer. "

  • “In Wyoming, I saw the tight conditions and stood outside in the cold and wind to at least be able to somewhat empathize with the feeling of walking outside just to use the bathroom and shower. But perhaps most importantly, I appreciated the remoteness of Wyoming. If it felt barren and austere to me, I can only imagine how an Issei must have felt arriving on a train from Santa Anita in 1940s Cody and thinking to herself: 'where am I?'"

  • "For most of the trip, my sensory system was overwhelmed with the newness of the landscape. Walking up hills, I was shorter of breath as a result of the thin mountain air. I was cold, so cold, as the wind whipped during our tour of the site of the concentration camp. All were experiences that the Japanese Americans who were packed into trains and transported to Wyoming felt too. Without a doubt, my understanding of Japanese American imprisonment would not be as whole if it were not for this immersive experience. "

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