Wyoming’s lineup of music festivals and cultural celebrations grows every year with fevered demand from residents and tourists.
Small towns like Laramie, Centennial, Medicine Bow and other rural areas are becoming economic beneficiaries on a regular basis from youthful creative events in their communities or merely by being on the route to and from events.
“People have the tendency to speed through, fly by and maybe just think of this as a turn in the road,” Virginian Hotel and Restaurant owner Vickie Scott said. “My husband and I own and host but my husband, Vernon, is really the spirit behind making the magic happen.”
Each year, two notable music festivals descend upon the quiet turn in the road between Casper and Laramie known as Medicine Bow. The summer hosts a punk and metal festival known as The Battle For Old Wyoming, while the winter months just produced their pearl with the Midwinter Meltdown, a funky folk and electric jam-fest.
“At the Beartree Tavern and Café in Centennial, we’ve got a long history, a tradition by now, of having a place where people can come and have fun and jam out year-round,” Phil Bolton, a regular patron of Beartree Tavern and Café, said. “We’re busy in the winter with Snowy Range Ski Area nearby and in the summer we always have great musicians either living in town, passing through, or coming and going to bigger venues like Jackson Hole.”
The Wyoming Governor’s Office spotlighted this kind of travel and tourism as an economic engine in the state and created cooperatives under the ENDOW initiative to promote these kind of events and repetitive long-term economic boosts. A new specialized initiative under ENDOW would focus on bringing stable diversified sources of income to towns and areas much like Centennial and Medicine Bow.
Many other rural towns and areas in Wyoming are finding or found long ago that a town celebration can mean big business. Places like Hulett, Wyoming synchronize their shenanigans with national events like the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Last summer, after the total solar eclipse, it took some tourists two days in bumper-to-bumper traffic to leave rural areas like Pavilion, Wyoming and make it to the state line.
“We’ve been hosting music for over 10 years and it’s always a really nice weekend when both young and old people come out to see what’s happening,” Scott said. “It’s not an economic situation that gets us all the way through the year but it definitely adds up and helps put the whole town of Medicine Bow in a good mood.”
The Virginian Hotel doesn’t run a streamlined and pervasive advertising campaign to bring more musical and cultural talent to its stage. The advertising and the opportunity to create an economic opportunity for everyone arose from a word of mouth system, Scott explained.
“We don’t really advertise for people to come here but when they show up we roll out the red carpet,” Scott said. “We’re a diverse town doing something unique and I think that’s the real reflection of Wyoming.”
Every year, people travel from all around the Rocky Mountain region to visit Yellowstone, Jackson, Lander and other tourist hotspots, but they find out about Riverside for WHAT Fest, Tensleep for a rendezvous and they just might find themselves in Shoshoni at the House of Wonders.
It costs more to produce large multi-day music and cultural events in larger towns and cities so it makes sense that Wyoming’s rural towns have been cashing in and creating fun for financial benefit for decades.
Keep an eye out for upcoming shows at your local “turn in the road.” Who knows? Maybe the next big bash will be at Tie Siding or Buford. Regardless, Wyoming’s rural areas have an opportunity to buoy their own economic survival and create returning income. Rural Wyoming always rolls out the red carpet for visitors, that in itself, is a selling point.
