The Depot Museum. Photo from the city of Fortuna.


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Fortuna’s Depot Museum may yet live on.

The city of Fortuna has been forced to deal with an unforgiving, slim budget this year, and figuring out ways to compensate hasn’t been easy. Selling the River Lodge was on the table, as was closing Fortuna’s Depot Museum for a large chunk of the year. Currently open year-round, it costs about $30,000 annually to run. Most of that goes towards a part-time curator position. At a budget meeting last week, the finance department suggested closing it from October to April every year, or even shutting it down altogether. 

An alternative solution — converting the museum into a nonprofit organization and funding it through donations and memberships — is in the works. Fortuna’s city council will decide at a meeting tonight if they’re going to make the change. 

Here’s how it would work, according to the staff report: “interested community members” would create a 501(c)(3) organization, and the city would transfer ownership of the museum’s collection. Then, Fortuna would lease the building to the new nonprofit, and they’d be in charge of running it and keeping it funded. The museum would run on $22,000 of accumulated donations during the transition. There’s no word yet on who those community members would be, or who would be in charge of staffing the museum.

The move was inspired by Ferndale’s museum, which is also a publicly funded nonprofit. In 2024, it earned more than $50,000 in donations.

It’s probably not a perfect solution, the museum’s curator, Alexandra Service, told the Outpost today. If it became a private organization, the public wouldn’t have any control or oversight into its operations. The city also made a commitment to the people who donated artifacts, Service said, that they would preserve them and keep them safe; giving them to a new entity might leave it unfulfilled. Service suggested that an organization dedicated to fundraising be created to bolster the museum instead. The city would continue to operate it, but the funding would still be community-generated.

It fills an important purpose in Fortuna’s civic fabric, Service said. Since it opened in 1976 (part of the nationwide bicentennial celebrations), Fortunans have woven it into their lives. One grandmother, who has been coming to the museum since she was a kid, brings her grandchildren in; kids come in after school, or even sometimes drag their parents in. It seems particularly ironic that the city has to consider shutting it down 50 years after it opened, right before the country is to celebrate its 250th anniversary. 

“It has, I think, a deep, personal connection to a great many people in this community, and it would be a great loss if it were not available for people to continue those connections,” Service said. “…You don’t want to have to deal with losing a job. But, I think the idea of what the community would lose with the museum being gone is a lot bigger, and a lot more important.”

The budget meeting will be held at 4:30 this afternoon in the council chambers at 621 11th Street.