Wallace Or Bust Her Motto
When she saw Wallace in the movie “Dante’s Peak,” Kat Scott never dreamed that a few years later she’d be working as director of its Northern Pacific Depot Railroad Museum.
“I thought, wow, nice little town,” recalled Scott, a Pennsylvania native who was managing a travel plaza in North Carolina at the time.
Scott had wanted to move west since she was 8 years old, when she found pictures of this part of the country in an encyclopedia.
“I love mountains, the bigger the better,” she said. “Flat places make me claustrophobic.”
When her daughter married last April, Scott found herself free to go wherever she wanted. She seized the opportunity.
“I always wanted to move to Colorado,” she said. “I told my sister and she said, ‘I’m coming with you.”’ The two found Durango immensely appealing, but also outrageously expensive, and employment was hard to come by.
Wallace was their second and final stop. Scott refers to it as “a Dickens town.” Not only was it visually pleasing, Scott’s sister immediately landed a job with a local hotel and Scott was quickly selected for the position at the Depot Museum.
After her work at the travel plaza, Scott finds her new duties almost restful.
“The travel plaza was a 24-hour operation with no less than 150 employees. It had a 24-hour restaurant, a truck garage and fuel islands, a convenience store and a gift shop. It was fairly complex,” she said.
A talented merchandiser and manager, Scott won awards for her work at the travel plaza. She’s already applied some of that skill to the museum gift shop.
“We’ve added a lot of new merchandise - clocks, ties, other things - all to do with railroads. It’s selling quite well,” she said.
Next she envisions creating an audio cassette for self-guided tours.
“We have pictures and displays but there are other things that people want to know,” she said. “How old the building is, the fact that it was moved, who lived here … there’s a lot of interesting detail we could work in.”
Scott also plans to change some of the displays and has come up with a scheme or two to add spice to Depot Day next year.
She’s enjoying the job, but she’s also found time to enjoy the countryside. And the people.
“On the East Coast, people are always in a rush, with too many things on their minds to be helpful. The South is supposed to be friendly, but if you ask me, Westerners definitely have them beat for friendliness and hospitality,” she said. “Everyone here is so wonderfully nice, I can’t believe it.”