TIONESTA - Ground finally was broken Saturday afternoon in Tionesta for the proposed Hunting and Fishing Museum of Pennsylvania nearly 12 years after the idea was conceived.

Dan Habjanetz, the museum's secretary/treasurer who also serves as fund-raising chairman, said people have asked him hundreds of times what has taken so long. The $13 million price tag, for one, has proved a formidable project for the facility's board of directors, but Habjanetz said "this project is still here because of how awesome it is."

"Any other project would not have survived 12 years to get us to a groundbreaking. ... But the reality of the matter is that we can't take a break," Habjanetz said before dignitaries turned ceremonial shovels of dirt on Lighthouse Island.

The museum now has $5 million pledged or in hand along with a $4 million bridge loan secured through Northwest Savings Bank, according to Julia McCray, museum executive director. With that, bid packets should be able to go out in early 2007. Construction is expected to take 12 months and the facility should open in 2008, she said.

"We have an immense amount of money to raise - not just to get the building done, but to make sure it's here 10, 15 or 20 years from now," Habjanetz said.

Part of the needed $13 million includes a $3 million endowment for the museum, McCray said.

"We have some incredible fund-raising opportunities," Habjanetz said. "Until now, this has been a dream; now we can show (our supporters) something."

Jim Lynch, the Warren resident and former state representative who conceived the museum idea, credited the cumulative 25 to 30 board members who have served during several years with making the weekend's event possible.

"The board has done a magnanimous job at getting us to this point," Lynch said, indicating his long-held belief in the museum to further ignite northwestern Pennsylvania's tourism trade.

In 1994, he was looking at a state map that showed all Pennsylvania museums when he noticed a "big void." He said then that the Tionesta or Warren areas were natural fits for the first state hunting and fishing museum in the United States. He has been only one of several people - including Gov. Ed Rendell - to propose that the museum will draw thousands of visitors each month.

"It's going to have a significant impact on Tionesta and the surrounding area," Lynch said.

Lynch and museum backers are banking on a rounded hunting and fishing experience including amenities like an activities center, a boat launch, and on-site perimeter fishing in the Allegheny River to lure those numbers to the museum.

"We don't want people to think it's going to be a wall of stuffed heads," Lynch said in 1999. "It's going to be an education and conservation area where teachers can bring students to teach about conservation and hunting and why it's an important part of our area."

That mission remains unchanged.

But if the region is going to open itself to more tourism opportunities - of which the museum is a key player - Congressman John Peterson (R-5th) told Saturday's gathering the private sector will have to step up.

"If we're going to support tourism, we need to have more fine places for people to stay ... and eat," Peterson said. "... The private sector will have to build up the infrastructure. ... There's a huge future."

The congressman has successfully lobbied the state for museum funding, and he hopes to coax more museum dollars from Washington, D.C., through involvement of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Forest County Commissioner Basil Huffman offered his thanks to the likes of Peterson and Rendell for helping send taxpayer dollars to the museum project. Rendell promised the museum $4 million in 2003 from the state's Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program.

"Tourism is our major industry in this county," Huffman said. "Those people have gotten down in the trenches (and visited places like Forest County) to see what's going on. I applaud those leaders for state and taxpayer dollars."