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APGAR - You could call it a gift shop - it has all the requisite postcards and T-shirts - but then you'd be missing the whole point.

You'd be missing the fine-art pottery, and the woodwork, and the oils and acrylics and watercolors. You'd be missing the pastels and the photographs, the beadwork and leatherwork, the books, the quilts, the $5,000 canoe.

You'd be missing a long line of artists from Dave Shaner to Morite Dolack, a half-century of Montana creativity, inspired by Montana's most iconic landscape.

You'd be missing the fact that for locals, it serves as a sort of salon, and intellectual clearinghouse for conversations about the place where art, culture and science all meet.

"The gift shop," said owner Monica Jungster, "is kind of my front for clandestine creative activities."

For 50 years now, the Montana House has surprised travelers to Glacier National Park, promising standard gift-shop fare and delivering something else entirely - 550 artists featured across five decades.

Nestled into the heart of Apgar, the Montana House opened on Mother's Day, 1960, and was known from the start as something far more than your typical souvenir shop.