Grand Encampment Museum Vice President John Farr has some high hopes in mind for Carbon County.
While focusing on the county’s several museums and abundant history, Farr said he has dreams of turning Carbon County into the “history county” of Wyoming. He said with the county’s close Interstae 80 access and by changing up exhibits, Carbon County’s museums in Saratoga, Encampment, Hanna, Medicine Bow and Sinclair could bring even more tourists to the area.
Farr focused on working with those five museums because they have no state or county support, and depend on private donations.
“We have a lot of museums in our county, and each museum needs to focus on what their strengths are and then have the ability to change up their exhibits,” Farr said. “Museums have the problem where people tend to see them once and think they’ve seen them, but a lot of museums work real hard to change exhibits and change emphasis. Up in Worland, they have a major exhibit change every four months. They’re open year round, but we’re seasonal.”
As part of a seasonal museum, Farr said he would like to do an exhibit change for each year to give previous tourists, and community or regular outside visitors, the need to come back for seeing something different. He said that museums can’t stay put with the same exhibits year after year.
“I’d like to do it by the year so people can come back to see what’s going on each year, and if every museum were doing that, then people would come every year,” Farr said. “I’d go back and see every one of those museums if there was something changing. We had a guy make a major donation at our museum years ago, but he had never been back because nothing else happened to entice him to come back. You’ve got to get them in more often to raise money and so forth.”
Farr added that history is the No. 1 reason why people travel, and that for Wyoming, history is second biggest business in the state. He also hoped the museums could be properly managed and staffed with enough people during open hours to explain the history of the exhibits.
“People may wait their whole life to see the Grand Canyon and after 10 minutes say they’ve seen it, unless someone interprets it for them,” Farr said. “If they interpret it for them, they can spend a lifetime there. We’ve got to create that interest, that this is a place that tells a story of the west. That’s the big picture that I see this would do.”
Farr said he hopes to attract families and have enough interesting things in the museums for kids and teenagers to explore. He said younger visitors could be interested in the history that the museums have to offer.
“We could turn this into something special, and it can be a place you can take a whole family,” he said. “We can have someplace that the kids can do something and also learn something. Recently we had some 140 fourth graders go through our (Grand Encampment) museum for two days in a row, and even though kids all been to the Fort Caspar Museum in Casper, they said ours was “way more cool’ than the Fort Caspar Museum.”
Farr said also Carbon County is well-known by some because of the historical state penitentiary and museum in Rawlins, but if more people knew there were several countywide museums, it could bring in more tourists. He pointed out that with I-80, Highway 130, Highway 70 and Highway 789, the county could be known for a “museum loop” where tourists can stop and see the eight museums along the way that Carbon County has to offer.
The other three museums included in the eight would be the two in Rawlins and one in Savery.
“Many people are aware of Carbon County and what we have, but there just hasn’t been a real reason for many to come here,” Farr said. “If they could come down and see eight great museums in a nice loop, I think it’d be spectacular. I really think we can put this together and get it funded and sell it to the public. We can get people to buy into it and really support it, and the business and tourism communities have to really get behind it.”
Farr said that although Carbon County may never become as big of a Wyoming draw as Jackson or Yellowstone National Park, there’s a chance that it could become known for its museums rich in history.
“Wyoming makes so much out of Yellowstone and Jackson Hole, and even though we’re not going to get that big, but we can certainly become a feature place for a day trip,” he said. “We want to get people in there to tell the history, especially to families. We need to take these museums and turn this place into History County Wyoming, the most fascinating county there is in history.”
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