Old West Museum May Close
By Margaret Foster | From Online Only | Jan. 24, 2007
Old Cowtown Museum is a recreated cattle town with 26 historic
buildings.
Credit: Old Cowtown Museum
The Wild West is a little quieter this winter.
Closed for the season since October, the Old Cowtown Museum in Wichita, Kan., will reopen in June—unless budget troubles force the 56-year-old open-air museum to close permanently. A gala is scheduled for this weekend to raise money for the site, which maintains 26 historic buildings.
After a $300,000 deficit last year, the museum's board of directors laid off most of its nine employees.
"We want the place to stay open, but a lot of city officials don't," says Debbie Deroulet, who volunteers at Old Cowtown as the dancer Sinnamon Sadie. "We volunteers really want the museum to thrive."
Old Cowtown began with not with a gunfight but with a preservation battle. In 1950 a nonprofit formed to save three 19th-century buildings. Historic Wichita Inc. began moving the structures to a 25-acre site it had leased, recreating a cattle town. The group opened Old Cowtown Museum in 1953, and today the nonprofit relies on money from the city and Sedgwick County.
But neither the city nor the county wants to foot the bill to keep the attraction open, and the museum, which receives 65,000 visitors a year, can't afford to, either.
The city has hired a historical architect to evaluate the museum’s buildings, which it owns, along with the land. A hailstorm last spring damaged the roofs of several buildings, Garrett says, but otherwise, the wood buildings are in good shape, says Bob Garrett, interim president of Old Cowtown Museum.
"The city has given us money to keep them up, and we have kept them up," Garrett says.
Despite the budget crisis and the cold weather, the museum is open for private tours. This week, for example, a school group will visit the museum's 1865 log cabin, 1871 train depot, 1880 hardware store, 1885 saloon, 1910 schoolhouse, and the 1871 Southern Hotel.
"We're still alive," Garrett says. "And we're kicking."
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