Hager, Thrift volunteer to keep Frontier Village an attractive destination

Apr. 1—JAMESTOWN — Many people volunteer to make the Frontier Village what it is, and two of the most dedicated are CJ Hager and Amanda Thrift.

"I think it's a great attraction for Jamestown and there's a lot of opportunity to not only bring visitors to Jamestown off the interstate but to show residents within the community that there are additional opportunities to get involved and see what the community has to offer," Thrift said. "People don't realize that now with the General Store open up there, now there's another place to get ice cream. It's a great opportunity to go and buy gifts as well from the General Store to get the branded Jamestown merchandise. So I just really like to give back to something that I think can grow and better our community."

The city of Jamestown owns Frontier Village but Jamestown Tourism manages it. Allison Limke said the village annually has between 20 and 30 volunteers depending on the time and date.

"We usually plan a service day in the beginning of May to get ready for the opening of the season," Limke said. "During that day we often get a lot of groups whether they're Girl Scout groups or groups from a bank or groups from another entity in town. I know Triumph (Inc.) always likes to bring a group of people and that group alone is about 30 to 40 people. Sometimes those dates don't work out for some businesses so they organize their own service day."

Limke said organizing the volunteer opportunities takes a lot of work, with most of the work coming from assigning tasks and cleaning the village. Limke said they schedule each service day to take between three and four hours. Limke said it means a lot to her that people in the community like Hager and Thrift volunteer.

"It's Jamestown's Frontier Village and when the community has such passionate buy-in it just proves how much this site is important to the people here," Limke said. "What we take pride in is showing off to our visitors because we have hundreds of thousands of people that stop in there from all over the country and even all over the world, and when our locals are so passionate to make sure that they have that good impression, it really makes a difference for our community."

When the village is closed over the winter months, Limke said the buildings become full of cobwebs, spiders and mice that need to be cleaned up before the village opens in the spring.

Hager said he has volunteered at the village for a few years. He said he and his colleagues, Brittni Rodin, Jill Trygg, Hager's wife, Wendy Hager, Dylan Hager and Brian Amundson do work through their company Ameriprise Financial's annual service day. Hager and his colleagues reached out to Jamestown Tourism and volunteered their services and were put to work on different projects.

"A few years ago, we helped with general maintenance, painting, clean up, also helped with getting all the vegetation and plants on the strip that goes out to buffalo there all set up," Hager said. "Just setting up for those types of things. We put together a couple little fencing projects that were used for parking and that kind of thing. ... We went up there ... and they had us do a variety of different things."

Thrift said she started volunteering at the village six years ago when she was a member of the Jamestown Tourism Board of Directors. Thrift also volunteers with the Kiwanis Club, the Kiwanis Action Club and her coworkers at First Community Credit Union.

Thrift said she enjoys working at the village because the jobs are never the same. Thrift said she does whatever the village needs. She said she likes meeting new people and having the ability to see a job from start to finish.

"We're going to help start cleaning out some of the buildings just from the dirt and dust from the winter months," Thrift said. "I've planted flowers, I've cleaned up some tree branches. I've done everything to repairing the walkways up there and hammering in nails. It really just depends on what the need is and what time I have to give."

Limke said Hager and his coworkers volunteer yearly doing more manual labor jobs including staining a deck and painting around the village.

Hager said he enjoys working at the village because of the impact that it has on tourism in the city. He also said his mother, Mitzi Hager, volunteered at the location. Hager said he believes the village helps businesses in Jamestown by attracting visitors here.

Thrift said people should volunteer at the Frontier Village alongside Limke and Emily Bivens, executive director of the Jamestown Area Chamber of Commerce and Jamestown Tourism.

"Allison and Emily are great to work with and they are super flexible and they will find a job or task for anybody to do. It doesn't matter what your abilities are," Thrift said. "I have gone up before with our Aktion Club which is a Kiwanis Club for adults with disabilities and they've been able to tailor tasks for our individuals that have special needs to make sure that they felt involved and included as well. They're great to work with and they'll find a task for anybody."

Limke said volunteering at the village is as easy as letting the tourism office know that you would like to help.