AURORA — “So, where are you visiting from?”

That’s one of the most popular questions for visitors when they walk through the door at the Aurora Fossil Museum.

Since January 2015, the museum has been striving to reach visitors from all 50 states each year, as part of its “50 States Campaign.”

Museum Director Cynthia Crane said the museum created brass ornaments with the respective year and state engraved on it, and the first visitor from each state receives the ornament as a memento of his time at the museum.
“We make a little bit of a big deal about it,” Crane said, who joined the museum in 2014. “I started looking at some of the past visitor books to get a sense of what was kind of going on. I started counting and looking at the states, and I was like, ‘Wait a minute.’”

In the campaign’s first year, Crane said the museum reached all 50 states at the end of October when a visitor from South Dakota walked through the door. In 2016, it fell one state short of the goal, lacking a visitor from North Dakota.

On June 17 of this year, a visitor from South Dakota entered, sealing the museum’s annual goal in only six months.

“We don’t have a problem with places like Alaska. … It’s the Dakotas,” Crane laughed.

Visitors travel many miles to see what the museum has to offer, and according to Crane, it’s a family friendly atmosphere that lets people learn about science in a fun, welcoming way. She said people from all walks of life frequent the museum, and a lot of visitors hear about the museum by word of mouth.

“We had some visitors from Michigan a couple weeks ago that said they were digging for gems in West Virginia when a couple approached them and said, ‘Man, if you like this, you have to go to Aurora to the fossil museum,’” Crane said.

Moving forward, Crane said she’d like to see an increase in visitors to the museum. It will continue its annual “50 States Campaign,” hoping to engage fossil lovers around the country and the world.

Crane said the early completion of this milestone means the museum is getting more recognition, which is important as it continues to grow.

“We weren’t even halfway through the summer when we hit our goal. For Aurora, it’s just incredible,” Crane said.