The idea of 60,000 visitors effectively doubling the size of your town overnight may not thrill everyone, but for some of the small businesses of Gillette, Wyoming, the prospect is an exciting opportunity.

“As soon as we’d finalized our location for the 2024 International Pathfinder Camporee, I started calling businesses in the area, letting them know we were coming,” says Kim Taylor in a Zoom interview. Kim and her husband, Greg, are the camporee’s off-site directors. “I asked them if they would like to have business from the Pathfinders while we’re there, and if so, what they had to offer.”

After receiving several positive responses, Kim and Greg made plans to travel to Gillette and meet with several local business owners. What they found astounded them.

“They were ready for us!” Greg comments. “They had familiarized themselves with our honors requirements and met us with a list of things they could do to help Pathfinders meet requirements for honors pertaining to their area of expertise.”

Take Area 59, for example. This maker center is equipped with a wood shop, metal shop, laser engravers, robotic arms, and a 3D printing workshop. For the camporee crowd, Area 59 director Ellen Peterson proposed a pin-making class, digital photography for older Pathfinders to get started on their honor, and a drone operation lesson for any Pathfinder leaders who bring their groups to her shop.

“I grew up a Girl Scout and raised my daughter as a scout, too, so we’re very familiar with the concept of earning badges,” Peterson explains. “Whenever we’d go to big scouting events, we’d exchange pins representing where we were from, and it was always really fun. When I saw that Pathfinders do that, too, I knew what we needed to do.”

Pathfinders opting for the pin-making activity will choose from four designs and receive a kit with all the necessary materials. They will then get to tour the shop and see the machines used to make each piece in the kit before they sit down to assemble their pins.

“Everything will come together in an hour, so as many of them can do the activity as possible,” Peterson says. “There will be a bit of learning, but mostly, they’ll just get to create.”

Peterson is an educator in both career and passion, so if there’s a way to expand someone’s understanding of the world by using the Area 59 space, she wants to make it happen. And this includes the adults in the group.

When Peterson saw that there was a drone-flying honor Pathfinders could earn, she came to that idea from a completely different angle.

“If you know how to fly a drone, that’s great, but it’s difficult to just pick one up and do it,” she says. She realized that if the Pathfinder leaders didn’t know how to fly a drone, there was no way they could teach the kids to do it to earn that badge. “Our goal is to give the leaders the skills they need to pass on the basics of drone-flying to the kids, so what we do here during camporee will have a ripple effect.”

Peterson got the idea for the digital photography activity after she sat in on a photography class at the local college and saw a student working with a green screen to make it look like he was riding a T. rex. 

“I thought maybe we could have the Pathfinders choose one of the landmarks in this part of the country that they may not get to see on this trip and help them create photographs making it look like they did,” Peterson says. Plus, she adds, having something flat to take home as a souvenir just made sense.

Area 59’s activities were an instant hit; all the available class slots sold out months ago.

Hands-on Pottery, a local art studio, was also quick to create a Pathfinder-friendly activity. Michelle Thara, owner, had a mockup of a keepsake piece Pathfinders could come to her shop and paint for a minimal fee. The keepsake is an imprint of the Believe the Promise Camporee logo on a ceramic square.

“We’ll be teaching them how to use watercolor on pottery,” Thara explains. And while everyone doing this activity will use the same design, Thara knows they will all be different. “One thing I love about our business is that it can be customized and personalized to what people need and like. It may be a little bit my idea, but it’s other people’s art at the same time.”

Thara is used to and loves doing large events, though 60,000 is quite a bit larger than she’s done in the past, she admits.

“We often have RV groups come into town, and I do adult and kid classes for them,” she says. “I’ve done pottery, canvas painting, fused glass; the classes are usually packed and are an absolute blast.”

There will be two locations for Pathfinders to create their keepsake: one in town at Thara’s shop and the other at the Cam-Plex, where the camporee will be held. This activity was also sold out months before the start of the camporee. Thara expects 3,000 keepsakes to be completed between the two locations.

Though these are two examples of businesses that went above and beyond to welcome Pathfinders to Gillette, they are not the only ones. Another is The Rockpile Museum, which is not, as its name perhaps suggests, a geology museum. (Sorry, rock-hounds!) This site gets its name from (surprise!) the rock pile sitting near their location, a relic of the “old west” that demarcated the official entrance to the town of Gillette.

The Rockpile Museum is, in fact, the county’s historical museum. And as soon as they heard about the Pathfinders descending on their town, curators set about organizing special events, activities, and displays, including Native American dance demonstrations, local antique farm equipment, and even an authentic teepee.

“This town is dreaming big on what they have to offer us,” says Kim. “They have all been wonderful to work with and have done everything they can to welcome us while keeping our costs to a minimum.”

The Taylors say they couldn’t have accomplished what they needed to without the help of Visit Gillette, an organization that operates as a combination chamber of commerce and tourism center. Their contact there, Jessica Seders, has been immeasurably helpful as the Taylors have coordinated the onsite details for the camporee. (And yes—Kim assures us they have warned Taco Bell to stock up on beans.)

“It has been a lot of work making sure everything came together over the last five years,” Greg says, “but getting to know this community has been the true joy in the journey. We’ve fallen in love with the people of Gillette, and we can’t wait to see the kids enjoy themselves here.”

Peterson says it will be interesting to see how the Gillette community responds to the Pathfinders. “I’m excited to see what it looks like when a group that large works together to accomplish something,” she comments.

Thara agrees. As she enjoys meeting and talking to people from other places, the thought of thousands of people from around the world joining her community briefly is exciting.

“It’s a good feeling to be chosen to be part of this incredible event,” Thara says. “I love what I do, and I’m thrilled to be able to bring something positive to the Pathfinders’ experience here.”

Greg adds that the challenge of putting on a large-scale event for tens of thousands of people will always be daunting, but it’s absolutely worth it.

“To give these kids a once-in-a-lifetime experience is such an exciting prospect,” Kim says. “Standing on a bison ranch, touring a coal mine, going on a dinosaur fossil dig, creating your own trading pin—things you can’t do in many other places are all available here during Camporee.”

However, Greg says, the biggest thrill goes even beyond those experiences.

“To see the kids not only have fun but also meet and deepen their relationship with Jesus is just so incredible,” he says. “We can’t wait.”

— Becky St. Clair is a freelance writer who writes from Angwin, California.