From the Yellow Brick Road to the Oregon Trail, Wamego goes big on Kansas nostalgia with a Wizard of Oz Museum, nature parks, a Prairie Town Village, and more.
Around the beginning of the year, Shelby Herring and Rebekah Taylor began talking about opening a business together. And less than four months later, they are seeing that venture through.
Herring and Taylor are co-owners of a new event venue in East Topeka that they hope will become a hub for celebrations, special occasions and community activity. We really want to bring the community here to us, Herring said. A lot of times people feel like there s not a lot going on in Topeka, or even just on the east side. . We d like to keep people here and have things that people can come do and want to be a part of.
WAMEGO Growing up in Wamego, Clint Stueve saw how a group of people rallied around an old, crumbling theater to save the community landmark for future generations.
It’s that kind of passion Stueve is relying on to get the theater through its next 125 years.
Officially, The Columbian Theater turned 125 in 2020. But in a year marred by cancelled public gatherings and anxiety over the coronavirus, the theater’s plans to celebrate the milestone were tamped down. Some of them have even been postponed to the next notable year, the theater’s 130th anniversary in 2025.
No matter. The show(s) will go on, said Stueve, executive director of The Columbian.
Local cultural groups scrapped spring and summer events as the coronavirus pandemic shut down public gatherings and much of the regionâs tourism-based economy beginning in March.
Astoria, which awards cultural grants funded by lodging taxes each year for tourism-related events, forgave the money already spent, allowing the rest to be saved for later.
Local events, like the Astoria Regatta, face an uncertain 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic. Hailey Hoffman/The Astorian
But with the safety of public gatherings in the first half of the new year still up in the air with the rate of vaccinations, Astoria is asking cultural groups to decide whether events before July can still happen or return the grant money for safekeeping.