With opening coming this weekend, the Grand Encampment Museum (GEM) has undergone several changes in anticipation of a busy summer.
The museum, which opens Saturday and closes in December, has had new exhibits added and has restructured for the summer season. GEM full-time director Judy Stepp said they are currently working to have the museum done before its opening.
“The Culleton Building will be redone for the most part, and the board has been working on their interpretive plan with Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund Grant,” she said. “We’ve been working a lot with the community on what they thought was important, and we narrowed it down to the main things we feel are contributing factors to the area and what the museum is. The game plan is to have this building all done by the time we open May 24, and we won’t close until December this year.”
Stepp said there are six new e exhibits planned for the museum, which will include themes such as ranching, timber, mining, early inhabitants, domestic life, general landscape and water.
“We’ll base the exhibits around those things, and we’re adding a little bit of a modern twist by taking authentic photos and having them put on as a new backdrop,” she said. “We’re kind of tying all that in with the general landscape and water, because water has always been a big factor here and contributed to all those things. We’ll be remapping the entire building.”
The GEM also has specialty exhibits coming through, including Encampment Journeys, a project done with help from Encampment School’s high school students. For that project, local students will speak with older folks who have lived in the area for many years.
“Encampment Journeys is being made in conjunction with us and the Encampment High School English class, and we’re hoping to have a grand opening for that May 31 at 1 p.m.,” Stepp said. “For that, the kids are doing recording of the histories and information from the elders in the community. As we work together to get those stories, we’ll archive them. Stepp said the exhibit will be changed quite often. We’ll change that exhibit quite often.”
Another specialty exhibit is “Journey Stories”, which runs from Sept. 27 to Dec. 15. Stepp said that exhibit is being brought to the museum in part by the Smithsonian Institutes and Wyoming Humanities Council. The traveling exhibit will show how evolving mobility changed America, and how different forms of transportation helped it grow.
Stepp said they are looking at a way of changing how the tours are done.
“Some buildings will all just be open and you can look in them, and some buildings will be on tour,” she said. “We’re also looking at changing the way we do things with mobile apps. That way we can show our museum to those travelers who maybe come and we closed an hour ago, or they need to hit the road early and we’re not quite open yet.”
To be more technologically savvy, Stepp said they expanding their internet service and QR codes throughout the museum’s grounds.
“We’re looking at waiting on a grant, which will cover a new antenna system to shoot wi-fi to the entire campus, and that will tie back to the website we are rebuilding,” she said. “What we’re hoping to start off with and see how it works is the QR codes for the buildings. With that you can scan the QR code at each building and it will tie you back to the website, which will give you additional pictures or information.”
Among the historic tour buildings, Stepp said major renovations, including heating capabilities, are being worked on for the Peryam Livery Building. She said heated buildings will benefit tourists who come in the fall or winter.
“By the time we’re through with renovations on that, that building will be entirely heated,” she said. “That will give us two buildings that will be heated, and we’re looking at adding to that in the future in hopes of being open longer. We’re also working on inventory and things, and getting so we can change things and rest certain artifacts in the Culleton Building that need rest. Then we can switch them out, so the exhibits won’t always have the same things and the building can have a new look.”
Stepp said the plan is to give visitors a gainful experience in a short amount of time, if they don’t have enough time for the full tour.
“If you had a bus pull in and they only had an hour to go through it all, we’d want to make sure they could touch on enough important aspects of the museum,” she said. “If they had enough time, they could take that information and go to a specific building. Let’s say they were only interested in mining, then they would know where to go on other places of the museum in order to find those mining things.”
Stepp said she was also excited to keep the GEM open longer this year. In past years, the museum had closed in September or October.
“The Journeys exhibit is a driving force, and also having another building heated is a driving force in being open until December,” she said. “The board is looking at how being open later will be received as far as tourists go, and if that’s an area where we can pull in more tourists. We’re always looking at ways to accommodate our visitors.”
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