Columnist Joan Barron writes, ''The Museum showcases some of Wyoming's most unique features to create a one-of-a-kind experience you won’t find anywhere else.”
CHEYENNE — While Cheyenne residents continue to debate whether the influx of gambling outlets is good or evil, no one is questioning the positive nature of another new project.
It is a special gem —the Children’s Museum of the Capital City.
Opened last month at 1618 O'Neil in Cheyenne, the museum has been a long time coming this far, with multiple bumps and boulders in its path.
It came about because of the persistence of a small crew of dreamers.
Their success demonstrates the power of activist citizens determined to achieve a goal to enrich the community.
According to previously published accounts, the idea for the museum took root during a kitchen klatch at the home of Carolyn Veit, a museum founder and current board president.
Her neighbor and co-founder, Amy Surdam, had seen the children's museum in Indianapolis on a trip. She was deeply impressed and suggested starting a movement for one in Cheyenne.
The Indianapolis children's museum is the largest of its kind in the world.
The two leaders and others at the meeting went to work on a plan to develop a model suitable for Cheyenne.
The following year, 2014, they obtained nonprofit status for their organization.
Although it is the largest city in the state, Cheyenne has not had a museum dedicated for children specifically.
While children can only stand and look at exhibits in existing museums, a children’s museum offers them hands-on learning opportunities.
Each exhibit at the Cheyenne Children's Museum has been designed and developed “to be in line with critical child development milestones and Wyoming Educational Teaching Standards, while also showcasing some of Wyoming's most unique features to create a one-of-a-kind experience you won’t find anywhere else,” the museum web site says.
Jackson has had such an entity since 2011. Supporters there are building a larger children’s museum and have raised $4.2 million of the $6 million needed for the larger facility.
Raising money has been more difficult for the Cheyenne museum supporters.
They had a major disappointment in 2016 when a ballot initiative to raise revenue for the project from a quarter of the seventh penny for economy development failed at the polls.
The tax money would have helped to pay the estimated $20 million cost of the new museum building in the West Edge neighborhood in downtown Cheyenne.
The vote was 19,031 in favor of the tax and 21,297 against.
One reason people voted against the tax was because it had been promoted as a privately-funded project. Other “no” voters questioned whether it was proper to use tax money for a museum project, according to an account in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle.
Undeterred and buoyed by the 19,031 yes votes, the museum group pressed forward, noting they could henceforth boast of not using any taxpayer money. They also knew they would have to rev up their community fund raising.
It has been a long slow slog for the children’s museum dreamers.
It still is in phase one of its development. Starting out, the facility is targeting 8 and 9 year-olds. The plan, according to its web page, is to expand later with exhibits of interest to the older children.
Early during their search for a location in downtown Cheyenne, the museum supporters eyed the notorious “big hole” in a block in the middle of Cheyenne’s tourist mecca.
It was all that remained of Mary’s Bake Shoppe which was destroyed by a deliberately set fire in December, 2004.
The museum group thought it would be a good location for their project, which they wanted to have a downtown location.
They retreated when people warned about the traffic danger to children in that location, and the congestion caused by school buses unloading.
So the dreamers moved on and got a gift of land and a number of grants and donations.
The big hole however remains unfilled despite a number of possibilities that rose and then died, largely because of the legal mess of mixed ownership.
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Contact Joan Barron at 307-632-2534 or jmbarron@bresnan.net
