Marshals Museum director: 165,000 visitors possible

Jim Dunn believes it reasonable that 165,000 people will visit the U.S. Marshals Museum during its first full year of operation.

Dunn, the director of the U.S. Marshals Museum, said historic pieces being donated to the museum, artifacts already in storage, possible connections with other regional museums and collaboration with The Five Civilized Tribes are just a few of the reasons he is optimistic about visitor count numbers.

In January 2007, the U.S. Marshals Service selected Fort Smith as the site for the national museum. The cost to build the 50,000-square-foot museum — including exhibit work — is estimated as high as $50 million. Museum officials have not estimated on when the money will be raised and the museum opened.

The visitor count issue was raised recently when Fort Smith City Director Philip Merry Jr. said the city should do all it can to support a facility that will draw 165,000 people to the area.

An initial estimate for a Marshals Museum visitor count was 116,000 if the museum opened in 2012. Dunn said the 2012 opening was “wishful thinking,” but did not include the “synergies” of tourism and group travel between the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville and western heritage museums in Oklahoma City.

The Clinton Library was estimated to attract around 300,000 in its first year, but surprised even the optimists with attendance around 500,000. Attendance has since fallen back to between 200,000-300,000 annually. It is estimated that 250,000 people a year will visit the $50 million Crystal Bridges museum — set to open in November — in its first year.

“And I think they were being conservative in their estimates,” Dunn said of the Crystal Bridges visitor estimate.

Dunn also believes the donation of a U.S. Marshals badge and a pistol once owned by legendary Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves, and recent donations of iconic items related to the Marshals’ service during civil rights conflicts in the 1960s will help recruit visitors. The pistol and badge were donated April 11 by Federal Judge Paul Brady, who is a great nephew of Reeves.

On Friday (May 20), former U.S. Deputy Marshal Al Butler donated a white helmet, a bloodied armband, a 3-foot wooden baton used at Ole Miss and the Pentagon riots and uniforms issued to special operations group.

Butler was the lead Deputy Marshal at Ole Miss during the effort by James Meredith to integrate Ole Miss. Meredith’s attempt to register at the school — eventually supported by the federal government — resulted in several violent clashes between students and U.S. Marshals. According to the U.S. Marshals Service, 160 Deputy Marshals were injured, with 28 hit by gunfire.

He also guarded the first black children to enter New Orleans Public Schools integration and was at the 1967 Pentagon Riots when 47 demonstrators, soldiers and Marshals were injured as thousands of Vietnam War protestors tried to storm the Pentagon.

“The helmet and armband are iconic to the Marshals Service, and we are elated to receive those,” Dunn said.

Dunn also teased about the possibility of an “impressive” announcement related to support from the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole nations). Edwin Marshall, with the Muscogee Nation, was in September 2010 named to the U.S. Marshals Museum Board of Directors.

“We are working on a strategic partnership with the Five Civilized Tribes and others that give us cause for optimism and lets us believe it will increase our visitation numbers,” Dunn said.