Grays Harbor County museums collaborating on Passport program

By Kat Bryant

The Daily World

The museums of Grays Harbor County are launching a program this weekend to entice residents and tourists alike to delve into the area’s history.

Starting today, visitors to any of the county’s dozen museums can buy a Passport for just $2. Each museum they visit will stamp it; and anyone who collects all 12 stamps will receive a custom tote bag featuring a vintage travel trunk with the museum logos on it.

In addition, showing the Passport at participating businesses will bring other rewards. Carriers can get 10 percent off beer at Steam Donkey Brewing Co. in Aberdeen, for example, or one free used book at the McCleary Timberland Library.

“Whatever works for their particular kind of business — they’re just coming up with an idea, and we take whatever they give us,” said Nancy Cuyle, a volunteer at the Aberdeen Museum of History, who came up with the idea for the program.

She and her mother, longtime volunteer Emily Airhart, took the proposal to other museums last spring and were greeted with universal enthusiasm. By fall, they had created an informal association and began meeting at their various locations to execute the program.

Cuyle applied for and received a $6,500 grant from the Grays Harbor Community Foundation to get it started. The association then hired Alder Creative, an Aberdeen design firm, to create a booklet very much like an official government-issued passport that includes information about each of the museums. The group also hired Grays Harbor Stamp Works to produce a unique stamp for each museum.

Alder is also building a website, graysharbormuseums.org, which will feature even more details about the museums as well as the business partners that sign on to the program. As of this week, about 15 small businesses were on board, Cuyle said. The site was not yet operational as of Thursday, but was expected to go live within a few days.

“The history of Grays Harbor – people think of logging, but it has so many different aspects,” said Cuyle. “As I’ve gone around to these museums and looked at what they’re showing and the way they’re showing it … everybody’s different, everybody’s aimed at a different thing, everybody tells history in a different way. And I think (this program) is really an opportunity for people to learn about the county in a different way.”

This collaboration among the county’s museums has brought about another unexpected benefit: creating a forum to share ideas.

“We’ve talked about how you get volunteers, keep volunteers, what you’d want from a person on the board of directors. One of them asked one of the others to share how you get something on the National Historic Register,” said Cuyle. “There’s just so much knowledge with each curator. They all have different experiences, and so they help each other.”

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Partners wanted

The museum association is seeking business partners throughout the county who are willing to offer incentives to Passport holders. The idea is for the museums and businesses to cross-promote one another to boost local spending.

For more information on how your business can participate in the program, please contact Nancy Cuyle at ghmuseumassoc@gmail.com.

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The 12 museums