Valley Falls — What started in 1993 as a retreat for brainstorming about preserving the economy of small towns has grown into an annual event with a track record for results.
This year's three-day session in a 110-year-old barn near Valley Falls drew state tourism and economic development officials who've heard about the ideas born or nurtured here. The session wrapped up Thursday.
The first retreat led organizer Marci Penner to form the Kansas Sampler Foundation with her father, Mil.
"We need to be there," state tourism director Jeff Mercer said of this year's meeting. "The Kansas Sampler Foundation folks have gone from being in the theory stage to actually taking action."
Recalling the first get-together, Penner said, "We were all out there by ourselves. We needed to find each other. We found each other in that barn."
The foundation has developed a loyal following and so much demand for programs to nurture and promote rural culture that Penner struggles to keep up with it all.
More than 100 people from around the country have bought foundation memberships at $18.61 each the price matches the year of Kansas' statehood as word of its mission spread.
"The key is pulling the best out in a town, and to do that you pull the best out in the people living in the town," she said. "Valley Falls is a pathway to that."
Spurred by support he found at the annual retreat, Jim Gray opened Drover's Mercantile in Ellsworth nearly seven years ago.
The store, which features Western goods and apparel and highlights the town's Old West heritage, has helped forge Ellsworth's identity as a stop on the old Chisholm Trail.
"When you're sitting out there like a lonely little island on the prairie and you don't have any answers and you don't know where to go or what to do, it just slowly eats away at your community," Gray said. "
Tom Ryan, who runs a bed-and-breakfast in the barn where the retreat is held, only has to look at nearby Valley Falls to see the potential small towns still have. When he and his wife bought the barn 15 years ago, downtown Valley Falls was nearly empty. Today, almost every building is in use.
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