The future of the Fairfax Visitor’s Center was discussed during a Sept. 6 Congressional meeting as officials provided key updates on the planned initiative.
Casey Johnson, Secretary of Development for the Osage Nation, said the Visitor’s Center is in phase two of the planning period, with the train depot from the set of “Killers of the Flower Moon” being utilized. The site survey has been completed and a kickoff meeting was held in August to start the design phase.
“The architect and the builder that took the train depot apart have advanced knowledge of the building itself and how it goes back together,” Johnson said at the meeting. “They have it stored for us, so they already know what that building looked like when it was up the first time.”
The Fairfax Visitor’s Center was proposed in 2022 but work behind the scenes to get the project off the ground was needed. This included meetings with Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear and Congress.
“There were some folks over on the west side of Fairfax and Grayhorse that were asking,” he said. “All of that stuff happened over here, a lot of the filming was over here, Mollie’s from Grayhorse, all of those things. So, what is the Nation going to do to help the community?”
Johnson and others also met with members of the Fairfax community to figure out what type of attraction would best suit its needs.
“We had a meeting with members of the community,” he said. “We thought, ‘Well we have a train station that was the set in the movie, and what if we got a piece of property and put the train station up as a visitor’s center?’”
The next step was to look at property for the visitor’s center. Luckily a large property on Main Street across from Rock’s Grill & Pizzeria came up for sale, and the Nation purchased it for the location of the future visitor’s center. The property was cleared and is waiting for construction.
“We went to the Congress to ask for what tribal development gave us as an estimate, around $3 million dollars,” Johnson said.
Johnson asked Congressional Speaker Pam Shaw to sponsor the legislation. At the time the amount appropriated for the visitor’s center wasn’t largely supported, however, a compromise was reached to appropriate $850,000 to start the construction.
The architects stored the train depot and will do the construction as a design-build when the time comes.
“As it stands today, the architects are working on the design,” he said. “They’ve already done the site visit, so they already know what the ground looks like. It will be a complete design, but we only have the money to go so far, so it won’t be a completed product. But we will have the design when we get the funds to finish.”
While a portion of the amount for the visitor’s center was allocated, Johnson thinks eventually the rest of the funds will be appropriated by Congress to complete the center.
“I think they all support it; they just didn’t support the full amount at the time,” he said. “We have lots of priorities, and you can’t really number them fairly. But this one isn’t as high of a priority as the clinic or the PRT. But it is a priority to take care of our history. There is support to put it [the visitor’s center] there, there just wasn’t enough support to do the whole thing right now. I do anticipate support later on, maybe next year, to finish it out.”
Tourists across the country often go to visit places where movies or TV shows were filmed and also historical sites, and recently this has included Fairfax.
“I think everyone in the Nation understands that the movie was a pretty big deal, and the thought was there would be lots of interest in coming to visit,” Johnson said. “We wanted to take advantage of that.”
Another important factor was telling the Osage story from the Nation’s perspective, rather from an outside source. Incorporating educational and historical learning aspects into the visitor’s center is important.
“Down at the Pawhuska Visitor’s Center, Osages get to tell our story,” Johnson said. “The Roaming the Osage [bus tour], that’s not Osages doing that, that’s somebody else outside of Osages driving people around telling their side of the story and what they know. That’s not our culturally learning people telling that story. We want to tell our own story and not have other people doing it for us.”
Speaker Shaw was an advocate for the visitor’s center, both as a Congress member and a Fairfax resident.
“I advocated for the Fairfax Visitor’s Center because I’m a resident of Fairfax, and I clearly understand the need for any type of tourism or development in our small town,” she said.
Shaw received great feedback from other Congress members, and this helped get some of the funding needed for the new visitor’s center.
“My colleagues were supportive, and it passed,” she said. “And of course, the townspeople were very excited.”
Shaw would also like to see the community grow in the future.
“I would really like to see Fairfax get a boost when it comes to any type of business or reason for people to come to town,” Shaw said. “And the thing I love about the visitor’s center the most is that at the end of the day, it’s going to promote Osage language and culture. Eventually, it could be a space where Osage artists could display or sell their art, so I see this as positive all the way around.”
Mary Beth Moore, the Director of Osage County tourism said there has been a boost in tourism, especially in international tourists over the last couple of years.
“Fairfax is a unique little community, they honestly get a lot of international visitors,” Moore said. “It’s not in droves, but people are interested and it’s in Osage County.”
Osage County tourism promotes all the small communities and focuses a lot on the landscapes in Osage County, but also promotes local events. Fairfax is no exception. The Chamber of Commerce in Fairfax works with Osage County tourism to advertise events that are happening in town to help pull in visitors.
“The chamber ladies have done a wonderful job in cleaning up the community as far as putting out planter boxes and seating and trash cans,” Moore said. “If we do get people downtown, we’ve made it a little more presentable and it looks nicer. For a small town, you’re not going to find more welcoming and charming people anywhere but what you find in Osage County, including Fairfax.”
