EUGENE (AP) — The University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History has broken ground on a new wing to house more than 500,000 artifacts unearthed by road and public works projects.

The $2.8 million addition, funded mostly through a federal grant, is the first of a three-phase expansion program that ultimately will include a $2 million remodel of the existing collections vault into public exhibition space and a $4.75 million addition housing an archaeological research center.

Before Wednesday’s groundbreaking, the UO announced a lead gift of $500,000 from the Roseburg-based Ford Family Foundation. The gift will go toward adding a public galleria to the collections wing and remodeling the existing storage vault to exhibition space.

Under an agreement dating to the 1970s, the university is the state’s official archaeologist for the Oregon Department of Transportation. So, besides collecting the fossils and artifacts found by its own researchers, the UO is also is the repository for all artifacts uncovered at road, bridge and dam projects.

“Each time we break ground for a new road project, we turn up new pieces of the puzzle that is our state’s unique heritage,” said U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, the guest of honor at the groundbreaking. DeFazio, chairman of the House Highways and Transit Subcommittee, helped steer a $2.17 million appropriation for the project.

The UO collection has become so large it’s housed in five separate buildings. The new collections wing will bring items found on public lands in Oregon together for the first time.

Construction of the building is expected to start by early October with completion next May.

“Without this new facility we would have been forced to stop accepting many important discoveries from state and federal lands in Oregon, a reversion to the 19th century when many Oregon artifacts and fossils were shipped off to museums in other states or countries,” said Jon Erlandson, museum director and UO archaeology professor.