Witch City rallies to reopen National Park Service visitor center for Halloween

October is go-time in the Witch City. But on the first day of the month, leaders in Salem, Mass. confronted a potentially scary problem as the government shutdown closed a visitor center — and its bathrooms.

Throngs of Halloween fans flock there for ghost tours, to get tarot card readings and to see historic sites from the infamous witch trials of 1692. When nature calls, a lot of the Halloween revelers head down the cobblestone pedestrian mall to the National Park Service Armory Regional Visitor Center.

“The visitor center has some of the best bathrooms in Salem, so it's very popular,” Annie Harris said. “It’s one of the few places that you could have a real bathroom and not have to go to a porta-potty.”

Harris is CEO of Essex National Heritage Commission, a nonprofit that promotes local history and culture throughout the county and also helps staff the visitor center. She said Salem’s year-round population is about 45,000. But the city, cultural organizations and businesses band together to welcome one million Halloween tourists — and their dollars — to the month-long "Haunted Happenings" festival.

“It gets very intense,” Harris said, “particularly on the weekends.”

As October 1 approached, the ghosts of government shutdowns past motivated Harris to try to preserve the hub of accessible toilets, along with its information about Salem’s history, exhibitions and tickets for attractions.

“This is the third shutdown that's happened in October of the visitor center,” she said, “The second time — about halfway through — I realized that actually maybe there would've been a way to keep it open.”

Harris said the NPS has been a part of Salem’s fabric since it established the Maritime National Historical Park on the waterfront in 1938. That was the first National Historic site in the United States, and the agency had a role in creating this visitor center in the 1990s.

Essex Heritage has worked closely with NPS over the years, so Harris called Jennifer Hardin, superintendent of the Salem Maritime Historic Site. She said Hardin believed the agency’s Washington headquarters would allow Salem to reopen the visitor center if the community covered costs for the month of October upfront — including staff to clean the bathrooms, a park ranger and utilities.

But the estimated $16,0000 to $18,000 they would need was daunting for the nonprofit leader. So Harris emailed Salem’s Mayor Dominick Pangallo to say, “I think we could maybe keep it open. Are you interested?"

The possibility of reopening the visitor center hadn’t occurred to Pangallo. “I had been thinking about past shutdowns when we had volunteers out front as a pop-up information center.”

Pangallo explained how the intersection of the Halloween season and the beginning federal fiscal year has been problematic for the city and its NPS sites.

“We want people to know the full scope of Salem's history, and the Park Service is an important part of that," Pangallo said. "It talks about maritime history, our contributions to the American Revolution, to the great age of sail and the building of the American economy. And when those buildings are closed, we're not really able to tell those stories.”

The mayor worked out a donation agreement between the NPS, Essex Heritage and Eastern National, the organization that runs the gift shop. Then they just needed the cash.

So Pangallo reached out to community partners including Ashley Judge, executive director of the city’s marketing organization Destination Salem. She was thrilled because in October, stakes are high. “We don't want anyone coming here and having a negative experience," Judge said. “And so it was really important that this not become the crummy year — the year without bathrooms. It was a problem we needed to solve.”

Judge sent out her own flurry of emails. The Salem Witch Museum's executive director, Tina Jordan, was first to respond. The museum is right down the street from the visitor center and attracts about 60,000 visitors in October. After Jordan read Judge’s email she jumped on the phone and called her museum’s CEO Biff Michaud. When she asked what he wanted to do, he immediately offered to contribute $8,000.

Other organizations added to the visitor center coffer, including the Peabody Essex Museum, the Salem Wax Museum and Creative Collective, a group representing 300 artists and entrepreneurs.

About $18,000 and 48 hours later, the visitor center was able to reopen its doors. Jordan is amazed, but not totally surprised, that it came together so quickly.

“This is an amazing community. It's very diverse. It's very inclusive. It's a 'no place for hate' community,” she said. “Everybody rallies together when push comes to shove.”

But the funding will run out and expire after Halloween weekend on Nov. 2. If there’s still a shutdown, the visitors center will close its doors again.

"People's jobs are at stake, and there are so many people who live in Salem who work for the National Park Service," Jordan said. "So please, please, let's get them back to work."