The Torrington Gopher Hole Museum in Alberta, Canada

What does a small village with little tourism prospects do to generate revenue from passers-by? Some places might erect statues of unusual items, like a giant sausage (Mundare, Alberta), or a massive replica Easter egg (Vegreville, Alberta). Others may hold strange and random festivals, like Spock Days, where everyone dresses up in a Star Trek costume and greets one another with "V" shaped hand signals (Vulcan, Alberta).

The powers that be in the small village of Torrington, Alberta, located somewhere between Calgary and Edmonton in the middle of wide open prairie, decided to open the Torrington Gopher Hole Museum. Instead of meat statues or futuristic costumes, Torrington has gophers stuffed, styled, and striking a pose.

Admiring the beauty of the Alberta prairies before going into the village of Torrington.

I had been hearing about the museum for years (I won't say how many, we don't need to focus on how old I am getting), but I had never been to see it, despite passing through Torrington hundreds of times while driving home to see my folks on their farm. This year, I decided, I would make sure to stop as I drove through and check out the museum itself. So that's what I found myself doing last week.

This Grandma Gopher is playing some serious cards.

I will share the embarrassing part first. I got lost. In Torrington. In a village with approximately 200 residents, and maybe three main streets, and I turned into the wrong street right off the bat. Then I made another wrong turn, and then one more.  Just when I was about to stop a local and risk being laughed at by asking how to get to the museum, I drove through one more intersection and found the museum. At least getting lost in Torrington is a quick affair. 

To be fair, I did not see any signs posted (probably because most normal people can find the museum in a more straight-forward way than me), and the museum itself is very small - smaller than most homes in a trailer park. So it doesn't stick out, if you know what I mean. It is a cute little white building, with an unassuming sign on the front wall and a tidy wooden ramp leading up to the side door. The most conspicuous element of the exterior is the wooden gopher cut-out where visitors can pose as a gopher for photographs.

Posing as either a gopher or a farmer - you can't really tell.

I parked on the side street just as another family pulled up (they probably hadn't gotten lost - I was too self-conscious to ask). We took turns taking pictures of one another with the gopher cut-out, then entered the museum. 

Admission to the museum is $2.00 per person unless you are under 14, and then the cost is a whopping $0.50 per child. (How does this place stay open? They could easily charge a little more, in my opinion.) If you are visiting solo like I was, or as a pair, try to bring change with you as it probably isn't even feasible for the museum to run your admission through a debit/credit machine. 

The front room of the museum is a little eccentric. The walls are covered in newspaper articles about the museum, artist biographies (specifically the people who painted the diorama boxes), and print-outs of cheery jokes and funny poems. On the gift shelves are, of course, T-shirts proclaiming one has visited the Gopher Hole Museum and Torrington village mugs. However, also for sale in the gift shop are hand-knitted baby booties and hats, hand-knitted doll dresses, hand-knitted wash clothes and hand-knitted pot holders. There's a lot of knitting there. Just something I noticed.

The quirky gift shop at the Torrington Gopher Hole Museum.

Once I finished perusing the gift shop shelves, I made my way into the only other room in the building: the main gallery, which was the same size as the first room. Instead of knitting however, the walls were covered with wooden diorama boxes, arranged asymmetrically in a pattern that Klimt would have admired. The diorama boxes were gently illuminated, while the rest of the room remained somewhat dim. In this way, you could clearly see inside the dioramas without being bothered by glare from overhead lights. 

Each diorama presented a scene from Torrington life throughout time. Some scenarios were from the distant past, some from the more recent past, and a couple, such as the 'Happy 150th Birthday Canada' diorama, were set in today's time period. Each were extremely detailed, fully decorated, and of course, featured dead gophers as the main players.

The one-room museum is filled with these glowing diorama boxes. 

Even if you haven't heard of the Torrington Gopher Hole Museum, you might have guessed that it would be filled with gophers. Not live ones running around, nibbling at your shoes. These gophers have been snared, taxidermied (stuffed), and artfully clothed and staged. (I checked. 'Taxidermied' isn't a real word. You have to say 'stuffed' or 'stuffed by a taxidermist' even though they have clearly been 'taxidermied'. So I am making it a word now.)

Before anyone gets upset that poor, innocent gophers have been murdered for our viewing pleasure, please remember that this museum is located in the middle of central Alberta, where farmers and ranchers make their living. Gophers are not adorable gifts from God around this area: they destroy fields, eat crops, dig holes in the land which causes cattle and horses to trip and get broken legs or ankles, and are basically destructive and costly pests. They are habitually poisoned or shot to keep their population in check. And if you've even driven down a highway in central Alberta, you will see your fair share of gopher roadkill along the shoulders, if you don't happen to accidentally contribute to that situation yourself.

There has actually been some controversy surrounding this museum, but I liked it.

And I like gophers. I think they are cute. I cried ugly tears one day when I ran one over by mistake. When I was thirteen I went with a farming friend to help her poison gophers, and I STILL have bad dreams about the results. But I completely understand the situation. If people didn't hunt gophers or cull them or whatever you want to call it, they would overrun the area in a few short years. So this is just a part of life. Not a lovely one. But a part. So please keep this information in mind when reading about what the gopher museum entails. The museum is a little tongue-in-cheek, but it is somewhat fitting for the central Alberta area.

Anyway... If you do think gophers are cute, and don't mind that they have been taxidermied, then you would probably really enjoy the museum's dioramas. They are funny, creative, and have obviously been put together with a lot of care and love. There are nearly 100 stuffed gophers in the museum, all arranged in different poses and situations. All of the clothes the gophers wear are hand-stitched by various Torrington local ladies. The background imagery was painted by a local woman, Shelly Haase, who has since moved away. The taxidermists both resided at least a one-hour drive away. The museum has definitely been a community effort.

Some illegal shenanigans at the Torrington Gopher Hole Museum.

Originally, the museum was supposed to be a place where visitors could go to see live gophers and learn about their habits, patterns, hibernation, and much more. But this idea was scrapped when the logistics of it were examined - building at least a four meter deep pit, encased in concrete and wire to contain the creatures was just the beginning. Not to mention how to control breeding, disease, and other issues. Someone suggested just stuffing the gophers, and the idea took off from there.

Dead gophers in love. It is so... romantic? 

Technically, the stars of the show aren't actually 'gophers', but Richardson's ground squirrels. Around here, everyone just calls them gophers. But whatever you call them, they do make for some interesting sight-seeing! 

I spent about 40 minutes in the actual museum portion of the building, reading the little jokes and quips in each diorama. (The beautician telling her client, "I am a beautician, not a magician!" made me chuckle.) I signed the guestbook, and photographed most of the dioramas - taking pictures is totally cool, I was assured by the curator Dianne Kurta.

This diorama made me crack up. Cheeky gopher!

Once I had taken in all of the scenes, there wasn't much else to do at the museum. I hung around the gift shop, asking Dianne a bunch of questions about taxidermy, how the gophers were collected (snaring, not poisoning or shooting because that damages the bodies), and other such nosy things. I was amused to discover that the museum's biggest nemesis was none other than Paul McCartney of Beatles fame. When the museum first opened, it seemed he had a real problem with it. I doubt Paul McCartney has ever driven down a rural Alberta road and seen flattened gophers dotting the pavement as far as the eye can see...

As controversial as this museum could be, I still enjoyed it. I found it cute in a quirky way, and I can appreciate that the simple building and its furry residents help to keep a very small Alberta village afloat. I will most likely return one day with my kids - they would probably get a kick out of it. I am sure I will get a few comments with differing views, but to each his own! If you are unsure of where you sit regarding the Torrington Gopher Hole Museum, check out my video below to help you decide!