Attendance rises at Welk’s boyhood home after state purchase

Attendance rose at the boyhood home of polka-playing bandleader Lawrence Welk after the state took over the site this summer, historical society officials said Friday.

But with only several hundred tourists each paying $5 to see it, officials said there likely will never be enough visitors at the site to cover the cost to North Dakota taxpayers of its operations.

Diane Rogness, a State Historical Society site manager who has given tours of the home since the state took over operations July 1, estimated about 730 people in July and August visited the 6-acre homestead in Strasburg, about 75 miles southeast of Bismarck. The home closed for the season last week but will reopen under special circumstances, she said.

In all of last year, about 650 people visited the site that’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

“It did well,” said Claudia Berg, director of the State Historical Society. “Visitation was up from the previous year.”

Rogness said Welk’s home drew visitors and busloads of tourists from as far away as Massachusetts and Florida this summer. Nationwide publicity about the state’s purchase of the site helped attract tourists, she said.

“It’s been in all the papers,” Rogness said.

The Legislature approved $100,000 in the Historical Society’s budget two years ago to purchase the property from Welk’s nieces — Evelyn Schwab and Edna Schwab — but the purchase was contingent on repairs being made to the property. It was among several projects funded by the lawmakers while oil prices were high that likely would not have been approved in leaner times.

With oil prices now slumping, lawmakers this year reluctantly approved $100,000 over the next two years to cover the cost of operating the site. The appropriation had lawmakers at odds for a time, with the Senate wanting to fund the site’s maintenance and other costs and the House wanting the Historical Society to find the money elsewhere.

Welk left Strasburg at age 21 to start a musical career that took him from dance halls in the Dakotas to national television. He became known as the “King of Champagne Music” for his bubbly dance tunes and added to the national lexicon with his heavily German-accented phrases, “Ah-one, an’ ah-two” and “wunnerful, wunnerful.”

The Schwabs gave tours of the farmstead since it was restored with private funds in the early 1990s. Welk donated about $140,000 for the restoration before his death in 1992 at age 89. The Schwabs have said the site drew more than 7,000 people in 1992, but attendance had steadily slipped since then.

Rogness said most of the visitors this year were older adults but “a surprising number of young families” also toured the property, which also highlights farming and the region’s German-Russian heritage.

Berg and Rogness said the Welk farmstead, like most other historic sites in the state, was never intended to be a moneymaker.

“Admission really only helps defray some of the costs,” Rogness said. “Our mission is to get important stories out to people who visit.”

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