Valthornet, Dec 2023

Valthornet

Dec 2023

We’re closing out the year and I wanted to take a look at our visitor numbers. We had 764 come into the Vasa National Archives and an additional 300 visit our Butter making booth in the park. These numbers are in-line with our pre-Covid numbers!

We had tremendous success with our Dala Horses this year with about 190 sold. This year our Dala horses were flat ornaments instead of 3-D horses.  We had a few people ask about the 3-D horses and we will offer people the choice between flat and 3-D next year.

We will spend the winter working on an exhibit on District Lodge Rocky Mountain #11. William Strook, former DM of DL #11, has spent the past few years sending us materials from the now defunct district and its lodges.  DL #11 included Colorado and Wyoming with 19 lodges. We’re looking forward to spending our winter months digging into the history of DL #11 and its lodges.

We’ll hopefully start research on an exhibit for 2025. While Kathy was in Sweden, the tour group she was with had a presenter talk about Swedish immigrants and their interactions with Native Americas. The Sami exhibit from 2013 was well received and we’ve had a few ask about it in the past few years. There are several interesting topics to choose from and we’ll work on narrowing down topics early in the 2024 tourism season.

We hope you have had a great year and wonderful visits with your family and friends this holiday season.

In Truth and Unity,

Kathy Cuff