In the video above, Owen Skornik-Hayes reports on the grand opening of Big Sky Antiques at 850 Fifth Lane NW between Fairfield and Choteau. Click here to visit the Facebook page.
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Just up the road between Fairfield and Choteau, you might catch a waving flag on the side of the road which reads, ‘Antiques’.
If you turn onto the gravel road, and follow the signs, you’ll stumble upon ‘Big Sky Antiques’ located at 850 Fifth Lane NW. The shop has been there since 1993, but it had been left mostly vacant since 2018.
On Friday, it sprang back to life. For the first time in six years, Big Sky Antiques is back to its regular operating hours of 10am to 5pm from Tuesday through Saturday.
It’s a hidden gem in the middle of nowhere.
“I go to as many flea markets and estate sales as I can, dig up a little bit here and a little bit there and bring it back and stick it on the shelves,” says the owner, Lane Clark.
For as long as he can remember, Lane has been fascinated by the scarce and novel.
“I would go to the flea market, and I had to have a dollar in my pocket and find something to buy,” he says.
Lane's parents, Earl and Rose, moved the family out to Fairfield from California in 1973. It was there they opened up the original shop, named ‘Country Rose’.
After twenty years, the shop was moved to its current location in 1993.
In 2003, Lanes’ mother fell victim to a horse-riding accident, and later passed away in 2005.
Lane's father continued to run the shop with some help from Lane until his passing in 2018.
After that, business out of the shop fell mostly quiet and inconsistent.
“I needed an outlet for my stuff, so I bought this place from my sisters and, moved all my stuff in,” says Lane.
Upon completing the purchase, Clark knew the most important thing to do was keep the shop close to what had always been its hallmark - family - so he called up his daughter.
“The option was, hey, there’s a house sitting empty and a store that we would like to get back open,” says Brianna Darlington, Lane's daughter. “And it was a pretty simple yes. To be able to come back to, be part of what my family has been doing for years.”
In the future, Brianna looks to take over the role as manager of the shop, and maybe one day hand it down to her own children.
“It’s going to be a multigenerational thing from from my grandparents to my parents to me to my kids. It’s probably the coolest aspect of it all that that they get to just grow up in this storefront,” says Brianna.
Most of the items in the shop come from Lane’s personal collections, items he’s amassed over the past 25 years.
For many seasoned antique hunters, it’s one of the finest collections in the region, and possibly the state.
“The amount of people that my dad knows that have done antiques for years, that come in here and are still floored. When they say those things that makes my heart burst,” says Brianna.
Lane jokes he’s a hoarder, but looking around, it’s a collection of items proudly displayed with purpose and pride, not disheveled and disrespected - the result of an eye for detail and value.
For now, the floor belongs to Lane, but you can tell, it’s also an ode to his loving parents.
“Earl and Rose are looking down smiling,” says Lane. “They’d definitely be proud.”
