U.S. Marshals Museum May Land in Fort Smith

Fort Smith officials have been waging a battle to bring the U.S. Marshals Museum to the former frontier city on the Arkansas River.

Three other cities — Omaha, Neb., Cody, Wyo. and one unnamed location — are also in the running.

But it appears Fort Smith has the edge, said Patrick Creamer, a spokesman for Rep. John Boozman’s office in Washington, D.C.

“So far, the Marshals Service has been really impressed with what Fort Smith has done,” he said.

In January, Fort Smith officials sent a DVD to the Marshals Service to help sway their decision. Also, the city held a reunion of descendents of Marshals in May 2004.

Benigno Reyna, director of the Marshals Service, has formed a site-selection committee to find a location for the museum, which opened in 1990 in Laramie, Wyo., and closed in January 2003 amid complaints that security was lax.

According to an Oct. 3, 2002, article in the Southwest Times Record, Rep. Boozman, R-Rogers, met with U.S. Marshals Service public affairs chief Don Hines to lobby for relocating the museum to Fort Smith.

The Marshals Museum could be housed temporarily in the 7,000-SF Frisco train station downtown, which was acquired by the Fort Smith National Historic Site in 2003, said Claude Legris, executive director of the Fort Smith Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The Historic Site is also home to a museum about the era of Judge Issac Parker, the notorious “hanging judge” who held court in Fort Smith from 1875 to 1879, condemning 160 men to die and hanging 79 of them.

The museum was established by the Smithsonian Institution to celebrate the bicentennial of the Marshals Service. It traveled to 13 cities over two and a half years before settling at the Wyoming Territorial Park’s horse barn theater in Laramie, where it drew 40,000 visitors a year, according to the Marshals Service Web site.

Several cities had expressed an interest in hosting the museum permanently before it opened in Laramie. They included Washington D.C., Nashville, Tenn., St. Louis and Fort Smith.

Fort Smith is a logical place for the museum, said Richard “Dick” O’Connell, a Fort Smith-based U.S. marshal for the Western District of Arkansas. Out of about 200 marshals or deputy marshals who died in the line of duty, 92 are buried in the Fort Smith area, he said.

“During the era of Judge Parker in Fort Smith, that was the launching spot for Oklahoma to bring [criminals] back to court in Fort Smith,” O’Connell said. “Oklahoma was Indian Territory, and nobody had much jurisdiction over there.”

O’Connell said he hopes the site-selection committee will visit Fort Smith and other cities in March. He thinks that will help Fort Smith win the committee over.

The museum included a display called “The Gunmen: Romance and Reality,” which showcased Hollywood’s perception of the West through a series of short clips from Western movies. Artifacts dating back 212 years in the museum included badges, arrest warrants of notorious outlaws and seized jewelry.

While waiting to hear if Fort Smith will land the Marshals Museum, the city has turned to sports to bring in tourists. The Arkansas-Oklahoma River Valley Sports Council was recently formed to help with that endeavor.

The city held Battle of the Fort in late February. The two-day volleyball tournament had a $212,000 direct impact on the city’s economy, Legris said. A total of 110 teams were scheduled to participate. The tourney was sponsored by the Fort Smith Junior Girls Volleyball Club.

Also, in the spring of 2006, the Southern Bowling Congress will hold a tournament in Fort Smith over four different weekends. That event should account for 2,400 hotel room nights and pump $258,000 into the city’s economy, Legris said.