Cowtown’s music fest ends on a high note

It is too early to know how much money was raised for Old Cowtown Museum this past weekend, but there were plenty of people in attendance.

And that makes Jacky Goerzen, the new director at Cowtown, happy.

“We definitely had good days, lots of fun and pretty good crowds,” Goerzen said Sunday amid the pop-pop-popping noise of a re-created gunfight on the living-history grounds.

Nearly three months ago, Larry Steckline, who owns KWLS 107.9 FM, announced his plans to hold a “Real American Country Fest” on the grounds at Cowtown. It would be a two-day country music festival with proceeds going toward revitalizing the place. Headliners were Mark Chesnutt and Joe Diffie.

Goerzen said Sunday that people attending the event were entertained by musicians doing jam sessions throughout the grounds, pony rides, a petting zoo and local gunfighter re-enactors. She estimated at least 1,000 people attended both days of the event.

“We are hoping to make this an annual thing,” Goerzen said. “And we are thinking of things we can do to tweak it and make it even better.”

According to a survey done last summer by Bothner and Bradley, a Wichita communication and consulting firm, Wichitans want Cowtown to be more fun and exciting.

The current mission of Cowtown is “to immerse visitors in experiences that represent life in Wichita from 1865 to 1880 in order to preserve and promote our community’s history.”

And although events like the two-day country music fest and an event scheduled in September celebrating the Roaring Twenties may be somewhat out of the museum’s time line, those types of events bring in new faces and introduce the history of Wichita in different ways, Goerzen said.

“We follow our mission every day in our regular interpretation,” Goerzen said. “That won’t change. But every once in awhile, we want to do events to draw people in – things to change it up and keep the public coming back.”

Cowtown, 1865 Museum Blvd., was started in 1950, when the first church built in Wichita, the First Presbyterian Church, was threatened with demolition. Cowtown is considered the oldest living-history museum in the Midwest and is getting its re-accreditation by the American Alliance of Museums; only 4 percent of the nation’s estimated 17,500 museums are accredited.

The accreditation process is expected to be completed this summer, Goerzen said.

This story was originally published May 15, 2016 at 8:05 PM with the headline "Cowtown’s music fest ends on a high note."