CARES Act funding and Paycheck Protection Program loans have helped them weather the storm, and donors showed out at the end of 2020 to double their year-end giving totals from the previous year.
Rick Young, supervisor of the Fort Caspar Museum, said they saw around 60% of the traffic they would see in a typical year over the summer. They took a hit from travel slowing down, since Young estimates the majority of visitors to the museum (at least pre-pandemic) were from out of state. A large outdoor space at the fort also makes it easier to distance and host visitors in person, even with capacity restrictions.
At Casper College, the Tate Geological Museum and the Werner Wildlife Museum have seen a recent uptick in visitors. Director of Museums Patti Wood Finkle said since the COVID-19 vaccine became available, both locals and travelers have started to come back in. Over the summer, the museums, which are free for the public, saw roughly a third of their normal traffic.
Finkle said the museums worked on ramping up their social media presence to keep people engaged while doors were closed in the spring, filming short “Tate Talks” on everything from crystals to woolly mammoths to post online. To make up for The Science Zone closing, Schnell said they uploaded YouTube videos on different subjects to keep providing people their “daily dose of science.”
At Fort Caspar, staff partnered with the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center to put on a monthly kids program called “Hands-on History,” offering free online classes for kids and delivering interactive materials to families to play along at home. The museum’s annual Candlelight Christmas, which usually draws more than 1,000 people, also went online in 2020.
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