GTNP's new visitor center set to inspire, connect people to wild

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

By Melanie Stein

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Traveling around the country’s national parks, monuments and recreational areas, visitors almost always stop through the visitor’s or information center, whether it be to get a map, buy a book, use the bathroom or talk to a ranger about hikes and wildlife. The park visitor’s experience at these centers can vary widely, however, as some are small and cramped with outdated exhibits, while others are new, spacious and full of state-of-the-art interactive displays.

In just over two weeks, visitors to Grand Teton National Park will no longer have to crowd into a 20-seat auditorium or utter “excuse me” repeatedly while shopping for the perfect book in an undersized store. The $21.5 million Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center – officially named, by an act of Congress, for Wyoming’s late senator, who died June 4 while receiving treatment for leukemia – will open on Aug. 11 with a grand outdoor ceremony at 10 a.m.

GTNP Public Affairs Officer Jackie Skaggs expects Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne, National Park Service Superintendent Mary Bomar, Grand Teton National Park Superintendent Mary Gibson Scott, and Susan Thomas and members of the Thomas family to be on hand for the ceremony.

“The ceremony will be a nice tribute to the fact that this is a public-private partnership project, acknowledging and thanking and giving tribute to the donors who have made this possible,” Skaggs said.

Also the ceremony will honor and acknowledge U.S. Sen. Craig Thomas’s life and “the many wonderful things he did on behalf of the National Park Service and especially Grand Teton National Park,” Skaggs said.

With $8 million in federal appropriations, $1.5 million from the Grand Teton Association and $12 million from the Grand Teton National Park Foundation, the new visitors center was designed by Bohlin Cywinski and Jackson out of Seattle, Wash. Intermountain Construction, out of Idaho Falls, Idaho, was the contractor.

Located across the Teton Park Road from the existing visitor’s center, the new facility offers breathtaking views of the Tetons from the parking lot, the entryway and the outdoor terrace. Visitors will walk through a courtyard area surrounded by massive columns of Douglas fir, harvested from a sustainable forest in British Columbia.

“As people enter the doors, they’re just going to be overwhelmed by this whole ambience and spectacular feeling they’ll gain from floor-to-ceiling windows that spotlight and highlight the Teton Range,” Skaggs said. Locators on the floor will help orient visitors to specific peaks outside that wall of glass, with information about the name of the peak, its elevation, how it got its name or when it was first climbed.

The Grand Teton Association – the park’s 70-year partner that sells educational and interpretive materials in the visitor center store – will have a much-improved space from which to display and market books on natural history, climbing, wildlife and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The store will be located to the right of the main entrance and will be 1,500 square feet, more than twice its existing 600 square feet.
“They will be able to expand their offerings. It has been so cramped, people can hardly get around the bookshelf areas,” Skaggs said. “Everything they make in the way of proceeds from sales, they put back into the park. They will continue to provide these additional funds but in a much more exciting and beautiful space.”

There will also be a large exhibit area, focused on the themes people, place and preservation. With cutting-edge dioramas, large uprights that mimic the angle of the mountains in the distance, full-scale sculptures of wildlife made from white stone and an old wagon from the JY Ranch, the visitor’s center will have dramatically improved, interactive exhibits and documentaries.

In addition, there will be a special mountaineering section with a floor-to-ceiling mural of the Grand Teton, which makes visitors feel like they are “vicariously on the mountain,” Skaggs said. There will be various types of climbing equipment that people can handle and see how it works.

One unique feature – the first for the park service – are the “video rivers” streaming across the floor in the exhibit areas. Glass screens, four feet by 15 feet, embedded in the floor will play exquisite cinematography, providing a bird’s eye view of wildlife, scenery and park activities. The flow of the video rivers mimics the sensation of a river flowing through a canyon, serving as a symbol of the Jackson Hole valley.

The new visitor’s center will also have a classroom for viewing park films and videos before the new 100-seat auditorium is completed next year at a cost of an additional $2.5 million, and for naturalist and ranger presentations. It seats 60 comfortably.
Discovery Communications created a new high-definition park documentary, “Grand Teton National Park, Life on the Edge.” The 24-minute film telling the human, cultural and political history of the park will premiere on Aug. 25.

“It shows the wild side, being on the edge,” said Roger Scott, who is coordinating many of the opening day festivities. “Wildlife challenges, natural climate changes in the winter, mountaineering is a dangerous exciting sport – there’s a bit of an edge to everything in this park.”

The Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center is an example of the park service’s move towards public-private partnerships, Skaggs suggested. For Grand Teton National Park, this relationship has paid off.

“‘Visitor’s center’ has a certain connotation, but ‘Discovery Centers’ are large venues to educate, inspire, kind of excite people’s sensibilities about the park,” said Skaggs. “We want them to learn a little more in a personal connection way.”

Roger Scott agrees: “The discovery center is the beginning of a discovery of not only Grand Teton National Park but all wild places. It’s about having people making those personal connections.”

Photo by Melanie Stein
Floor-to-ceiling windows showcase the Teton Range and native vegetation.

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GTNP's new visitor center set to inspire, connect people to wild | Planet JH News Article: General Environment

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