By DIANE GASPER-O’BRIEN
Special to Hays Post
It seemed like a dream come true when it finally reached completion in March 1999, although museum directors will tell you that a museum is never done.
Fort Hays State University began talking about bringing worldwide acclaim to Hays when it acquired an abandoned health club for $1 in a 1991 sheriff’s auction with plans to move the university’s museum across town.
Ed Hammond, who was just finishing his fourth year as FHSU president, had the dream of turning that domed building into a space for a museum of natural history. And so began nearly a decade of fundraising and planning.
Numerous Hays area businesses, along with individual donors, got behind the $11.5 million project that combined two smaller museums on campus (Sternberg Memorial Museum and Museum of the High Plains) to form the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in a 100,000-square-foot building at 3000 Sternberg Drive.
The buildup ramped up in 1998 when Hammond announced a March 1999 opening date, and from the get-go, the new Sternberg Museum proved it is here to stay.
Just two years after its opening, Sternberg made a huge splash with its first big exhibit – and undoubtedly its largest in museum history – when it brought to town the world-famous A T. rex Named Sue, the largest, most extensive and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex fossils ever found.
In two months time, more than 100,000 visitors came to Sternberg to see Sue, the traveling exhibit that now is a permanent exhibit in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
Sternberg has also had numerous prestigious traveling exhibits over the years. But the museum’s opening day—and A T. rex Named Sue—might be the most talked about even decades later.
The much-anticipated opening of the museum had survived an 11-inch snowstorm the night before, and the doors opened to the public on Saturday, March 13, 1999.
Brad Penka, visitors services manager, is one of a handful of employees who have been at the museum’s current location since its opening.
In anticipation of an excessive amount of visitors for the opening weekend, complimentary tickets were given out for each hour in an effort to control the amount of visitors for each hour.
Even with all the preparation for large crowds, Penka said the snowstorm actually had a silver lining.
“In looking back, it was a blessing it snowed that night before,” Penka said. “We were shoulder to shoulder here that first weekend, even with the snow keeping a lot of people away. I’m not sure if we could have handled anymore, so the snow was almost a blessing.”
About a thousand of the 4,500 tickets given out were not redeemed that weekend because of the snow, and there have been many a silver linings over the years for the museum.
Sternberg survived slow-down times during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sternberg celebrated its millionth visitor in 2020, and in what seemed like no time at all, museum staff realized it needed to be planning Sternberg’s 25th anniversary.
So on Friday, they celebrated with the theme of “25 years of Discovery Under the Dome.”
There was the usual ribbon cutting by the Chamber in Hays in the morning and later in the day there were remarks from U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, a native of nearby Plainville, and Ed Hammond and Tisa Mason, FHSU presidents then and now.
In between, there were tours of Sternberg collections in the lower level of the museum, ones that are not open for display to the general public, and talks on the Sternberg family.
More than 700 people visited the museum on Friday alone, bringing back memories of that opening weekend.
For Hammond and others who were present 25 years ago, it was definitely a trip down memory lane, and reminiscing was the theme of the day.
Hammond said he had a dream of making Sternberg a major tourist attraction that could have a multi-million dollar impact on the region.
“People thought I was absolutely crazy,” Hammond said back then. “They told me that there was no way it could happen.”
It did happen.
People from all 50 states and numerous countries have visited the museum since 1999, and the popular summer camps for high school students annually have international participants.
The Sternberg legacy lives on
The museum is named after George F. Sternberg, one member of a famous family of fossil hunters.
The former Sternberg Memorial Museum on campus featured mostly Kansas-based fossils from the Cretaceous period. Dinosaurs were added to the new museum to give visitors a sense of slipping back in time as they walk across a bridge and into the prehistoric area with the dinosaurs.
Following in the footsteps of pioneer fossil hunter Charles H. Sternberg were his three sons, including George F., best known for collecting the world-famous Fish-Within-A-Fish in Gove County.
George F. discovered his first unusual fossil at the age of 9 and devoted his life to fossil hunting and collecting. He was eventually hired by Fort Hays State to manage a museum and now has some of his fossils displayed in museums around the world.
Besides serving as a major visitors’ attraction, the mission of Sternberg Museum includes research and education.
Several areas in the museum are named after major donors, including the Seibel Lobby and the Engel Education Center. The building itself was named Beach Hall in honor of Ross and Marianna Beach, local philanthropists who donated $1 million to the project early on.
The museum features a life-sized display of George F. uncovering the Fish-Within-A-Fish and hundreds of other historical exhibits, both permanent and temporary.
One of the favorites for visitors young and old alike is a two-story mezzanine-type structure with models of life-sized dinosaurs inhabiting the second floor. The diorama includes a 40-foot long roaring, robotic Tyranosaurus rex. It got its name because of its size – rex means king in Latin, and this dinosaur was king of the tyrant lizards.
Memories galore
A milestone celebration is never held without a lot of “remember whens …”
Mason Ruder remembers walking to the museum from his home on nearby Metro Lane and visiting Sternberg two or three times a week as a youngster.
Ruder and other youngsters at the time could reel off the name of every dinosaur and flying reptile in the museum’s diorama.
“Oh yeah, I could name them all,” Ruder said with a laugh, “and I could pronounce them correctly, too.”
Now the father of four young children of his own, Ruder and his wife, Tori, have a family membership to Sternberg and often take their two young daughters, 5-year-old Ryleigh and 3-year-old Isabelle, to the museum. He is looking forward to his 1-month-old twin sons Matthew and Wyatt accompanying him someday soon.
“Our girls love it, and I’m sure the boys will, too,” Ruder said. “We utilize that family pass in a lot of different places. It’s great.”
Yearly memberships to Sternberg Museum also include free admission to numerous reciprocal museums around the country that are members of the Association of Science and Technology Centers.
Greg and Cami Liggett, both employees of the museum when it opened, still talk about the buzz surrounding the museum moving across town to the dome. Greg was assistant director and Cami was education director at the time.
The Liggetts moved from Hays in 2006 when Greg was summoned to open the Gateway Science Museum in Chico, Calif. They moved to Billings, Mont., in 2012 and now work for the Bureau of Land Management. But they still say their time in Hays and at Sternberg was a slice of life they will always fondly remember.
“When I tell people about that part of my life, I say we didn’t know that it couldn’t be done, so we just did it,” Cami said.
“We had such a good group of people where everybody threw their heart into that project,” Greg said. “It was a heady time back then, something we’ll never forget.”
Many others will never forget Greg Liggett’s idea of placing items in a time capsule to be opened years down the road.
Opening the time capsule
Some people anticipated the opening of that time capsule placed inside T. rex almost as much as the museum’s opening day. After all, 25 years is a long time to wait for just about anything.
A woman standing in line Friday talked of how she had documentation saying the time capsule, created in 1995 with a deadline of March 1996, would be opened in 2020.
Reese Barrick, in his 15th year as director of the museum, wasn’t around Hays for the start of that particular project. And the world was in shut-down mode in 2020 because of the pandemic.
Since the time capsule had been placed in the leg of the T. rex as he was being built, Barrick might never have even known about it if he hadn’t been told. But he said he was told often by phone calls from people asking when it would be opened.
Barrick thought the museum’s 25th-anniversary celebration would be a good time to unveil its contents.
The time capsule ended up being a large mail bag from the Hays post office, and people crowded around the tables Friday as Barrick pulled out about 100 envelopes and boxes.
Some folks opened their treasures on the spot. Others like Susan Nickerson kept them sealed for family members to open.
Nickerson, who now lives in Grand Island, Neb., drove to Hays while visiting her mother in Ellsworth to claim the contents placed in the time capsule by her children, who were 8 and 6 years old at the time.
Hays residents Joe and Patty Curry stood on the bridge connecting the second floor to the diorama, laughing while pulling things out of their envelope.
One of the Curry’ items was a January 1996 newspaper article from Patty’s hometown that talked about the Great American Cattle Drive with 200 longhorn cattle coming down the main street of Oberlin. Another was the window sticker from the couple’s new 1995 Grand Prix. The sticker price back then was $20,106.
Hays native Jason Ball shared with those around him some family photos that his parents had placed in the time capsule. He smiled as he unfolded a picture of a dinosaur he had colored as a 6-year-old.
A lot of people were smiling as they made their way down the stairs to the lobby for refreshments that featured a cake decorated with a dome on top.
Folks stayed around afterward, obviously enjoying reminiscing with some people they might not have seen in 25 years.
It was a good day. It’s been a good 25 years.
“What happens at Fort Hays State University in large part affects what happens in western Kansas,” said Sen. Moran, who also was present on opening day in 1999. “I’m here to say thank you to past leaders, present leaders and future leaders” of Fort Hays State for bringing prominence to the entire region surrounding Hays.
President Mason congratulated Sternberg employees on their “incredible success story” and wished them luck for the next 25 years.
When that date for the 50th anniversary rolls around in 2049, some of those who were present at the 1999 opening will no longer be here on this earth.
Just like now, the names of the museum director and the university president will have changed.
But the legacy of the Sternbergs – and Hammond’s dream come true – will live on indefinitely.