Museum could elevate OKC as a tourist destination
A dream almost 40 years in the making comes alive Saturday with the opening of the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, and while it is expected to give a boost to the local economy and tourism, the true impact may not be known for several years.
An opening that was expected to attract up to 20,000 will be capped at 7,000 as museum Director James Pepper Henry oversees efforts to prevent overcrowding and risks of COVID-19 contagion. No more than 3,500 will be admitted each day of opening weekend.
“This museum had its trials and tribulations, but we’re getting to the finish line,” Pepper said. “We’re not going to let a worldwide pandemic stop us from opening this place.”
What was first envisioned in the late 1980s as a 45,000-square-foot cultural
center at the crossroads of Interstate 40
“We’re not going to let a worldwide pandemic stop us from opening this place.” James Pepper
First Americans Museum director
and Interstate 35 represents a far larger vision decades later. The 175,000-square-foot museum, built at a cost of $175 million, opens as a Smithsonian-affiliated destination with exhibits and scope rivaled only by the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
In the last extensive impact study done for the museum, Applied Economics in 2009 forecast 390,000 visitors with a $58.8 million impact during the first year with a “leveling out” at 300,000 by the third year. The pandemic, however, has curtailed travel from Europe and Asia that is expected to be a significant part of the attraction’s tourist draw.
Pepper’s revised forecast is about 250,000 visitors the first year with a “low end” leveling out between 150,000 and 170,000 in following years.
“We scaled it back quite a bit,” Pepper said. “But that would still make us one of the most-visited museums in Oklahoma.”
Among the unknowns, beyond a full recovery in tourist travel, is the timetable and scope of commercial development by the Chickasaw Nation on adjoining land and other nearby improvements. Mayor David Holt, himself a member of the Osage Nation, is eager to see how MAPS 4 beautification funds might transform Eastern Avenue leading up to the museum and the Reno Avenue corridor between the museum and Bricktown.
“It’s hard for people to imagine how it is all going to look when (the Chickasaw Nation) will have this massive conference center and hotel,” Holt said. “They’ve got pretty ambitious plans. In every conversation I’ve had with them I’ve been impressed with the plans they have for this area.”
First Americans more than a museum
Marketing is set to start locally and then regionally. “Our focus right now is to let people know we’re open on Sept. 18 and beyond. Working with social media we will be doing PSAs and advertising regionally,” Pepper said. “We will then expand that into having a national and international campaign. The world is fascinated with Native American culture.”
Those guests, he said, will discover what he considers to be one of the state’s “most unique restaurants” with a reservation-to-market menu based on recipes of the state’s 39 tribes.
“People think of fried bread, Indian tacos, all that post-commodity food,” Pepper said. The menu, he said, will have foods going back to when buffalo was an important source — one that will be provided at the restaurant by area tribes.
“I think people are going to get a unique experience coming to our restaurant,” Pepper said. “We want our museum store to be the place in Oklahoma for anyone wanting to can find authentic hand-made items created by our incredibly talented artists in Oklahoma.”
Programming will expand as the museum ramps up operations. Pepper said planning is underway for a winter holiday art market, “WHAM at FAM,” that will feature native arts and crafts. Long-term plans include an international art market festival in 2023.
“We have a festival plaza that is three football fields wide,” Pepper said. “That will bring people from all over the world to Oklahoma City.”
Early interest in the meeting and banquet space is already measurable with 50 meetings already booked this fall and the calendar filling up quick. The kitchen was designed to cater to two events at the same time and also to allow the museum to cater to outside parties.
“We’re seeing corporate events and we’re seeing a lot of people wanting to get married here,” Pepper said. “We have the incredible half glass dome, the Hall of the People, that has room for 450 sitting and 900 standing. It’s a great mid-size space for people to rent out. We also have people wanting to get married on the mound.”
Old study concluded OKC had no major tourist destinations
One of the earliest mentions of a potential Native American museum and cultural center was in a 1987 study by Price Waterhouse looking at untapped tourist potential in Oklahoma. The report, commissioned by the state Tourism Department, concluded the state at the time had no major destinations.
“Oklahoma’s attractions are clustered around two population centers, Tulsa and Oklahoma City,” the report’s authors wrote. “There are a few regional attractions in Oklahoma but no real destinations. … The attractions Oklahoma does offer are, in general, small and of limited quality.”
The report’s authors suggested the state’s history, seen internationally as being attached to “cowboys and Indians,” provided a strong opportunity for Oklahoma to show off the 1889 Land Run and the array of Indian nations not duplicated in any other state.
The Oklahoma City National Memorial, which opened in 2000, was reporting an average 500,000 annual visitors prior to the pandemic and draws thousands of runners for the annual Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon.
A finished Land Run Monument, one of the world’s largest bronze sculptures featuring 45 heroic-size figures of land run participants racing to claim new homesteads, is seen by 120,000 travelers who daily drive through the same I-40/I-35 junction that passes the First Americans Museum.
All involved see a linkage with these attractions and more to come. Visitors traveling north on Eastern Avenue/Martin Luther King will in a few years be able to make a stop a few minutes away at the Clara Luper civil rights museum to be built at NE 23 and Martin Luther King Avenue.
A full 12-minute drive from the First Americans Museum will take visitors to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.
Like the First Americans Museum, the old west destination was delayed for years amid funding challenges before it opened on June 26, 1965, with more than 8,300 going through the front doors that first week. Free of the travel restrictions posed by the pandemic, the Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum attracted guests that week from Alaska, Turkey, Germany, Chile, Nigeria, Italy, France, Spain, England, Australia and Canada.
Cowboys and Indians can attract tourism dollars to OKC
Both Pepper and Natalie Shirley, president of the Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, say they’re working on joint promotions that they hope will build attendance at both attractions.
“We kind of bookend Oklahoma City,” Pepper said. “We’re at the south end of Eastern; they’re at the north end. You’ve got cowboys, and now you got Indians, right? But it’s not the Indians that people are expecting … that’s why we’re here.”
Native American culture is portrayed at what Pepper refers to as “the Cowboy,” but he notes it’s as a backdrop for the cowboys.
“And even cowboy culture really is kind of romanticized ideal of what it really was,” Pepper said. “That’s why they want to have a relationship with us. We can tell a broader, more comprehensive history of the west and especially of Oklahoma.”
Attendance figures at the Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum show the pandemic hasn’t dampened interest in the Old West. Thanks to new exhibits, programming and a youth-oriented area the museum is attracting more people in 2021 than it did before the pandemic. Over the last six months the museum was visited by 71,687 compared to 61,240 for the same time in 2019.
“We’ve done far more programing and we’ve done things out of the box,” Shirley said. “We just got licensed as a tattoo parlor and we will have a tattoo exhibit until January. We’ve scheduled tattoo artists to come to the museum and the story we’re telling is that tattoos have been a part of culture since man first walked the earth.”
The revamped Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, the First Americans Museum, the Oklahoma City National Memorial and the Stanley Rother Shrine are all drawing interest from national and international travel writers, Craig said.
“There has been a tremendous amount of interest, including Forbes Travel, Smithsonian Magazine, Conde Nast Travel and other writers coming in,” Craig said. “We’ve given tours of the First Americans Museum, but also the rest of the city.”
Staff writer Steve Lackmeyer is a 31-year reporter, columnist and author who covers downtown Oklahoma City, related urban development and economics for The Oklahoman. Contact him at slackmeyer@ oklahoman.com. Please support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.