The discussion at last week’s Mariposa County Board of Supervisors meeting over who should operate the Mariposa Visitor Center was instructive and revealing in ways I think most people didn’t anticipate.
It showed the Mariposa Visitor Center is still beloved, yet in desperate need of an updated mission. It brought to the surface festering concerns about how the county’s businesses and amenities are being promoted, or not promoted, on social media.
It also exposed some of the turf battles and gate keeping that holds back real progress and discourages new voices from joining the civic conversation.
To briefly recap, in January the county issued an RFP (request for proposal) to operate the Visitor Center, but with a new emphasis on social media engagement and how people consume tourism information in the 21st century. There were three bidders.
The Mariposa County Chamber of Commerce, which has operated the Visitors Center for 36 years, came in with what could best be described as a “business as usual” package for $209,000 that maintained the current visitor center and its prime location at the intersection of Highways 49 and 140, in a building it rents from the VFW.
But county staff thought it was time for a new direction and recommended the contract go to Yosemite Foothills, a small content and branding company operated by Juliette Vuillaume of Oakhurst.
She was the low bidder at $180,000 and her proposal leaned heavily into social media. The physical location of the visitor center in her proposal would become a 16×16 foot kiosk inside the Mariposa Marketplace.
It’s a wonderfully cluttered gift shop in historic downtown Mariposa, but no place for a visitor center. It doesn’t even have accessible restrooms. Let’s face it, a nice restroom is a priority for any visitor center.
Before the meeting last week, the chamber had whipped up its membership into a bit of a frenzy, warning that the Mariposa Visitor Center could end up being run by an “outsider from Madera County.”
That kind of talk is always juicy red meat. Sure enough, the chamber’s membership showed up and packed the board of supervisor’s chambers.
For the 28-year-old Vuillaume, it must have felt like she walked into a buzz saw of old codgers. You could immediately sense that despite the recommendation of county staff, she was in for an uphill climb.
It didn’t help that Vuillaume’s proposal was sort of dead on arrival.
The owners of the Mariposa Marketplace had sent an email that morning to the board of supervisors saying they had misunderstood the proposition of a visitor center in their building. And, as the owners noted, they didn’t have disability compliant parking or a handicapped accessible restroom.
One can imagine the opposition whipped up by their fellow chamber members may have also given the shopkeepers pause.
Why county staff had not vetted the proposal more thoroughly before giving it their recommendation is a question that should linger in the minds of supervisors beyond this week’s meeting.
County staff also prepared a graph that showed since 2023, Yosemite National Park has rebounded in attendance, perhaps too much, with 4.3 million visitors last year.
The Mariposa Visitor Center has gone in the opposite direction, with only 17,000 visitors, down from 26,000 just a few years ago. That’s a significant hemorrhage.
The graph should contain a large asterisk. It doesn’t take into consideration recent wildfires, rock slide and road closures along Highway 140 and the Arch Rock Entrance, which lags behind the South Entrance in the best of times.
Still, a valid point is made. Habits are changing, maybe very quickly.
But what became clear from the turnout, is that the visitor center is still considered a vital epicenter for businesses, if not always for tourists.
One by one, retailers and lodging owners offered testimonials to the power of a human connection for visitors. It is still a one-stop shop for lodging information or a dinner referral. It is also a focal point in times of emergencies, like wildfires, rocks slides or road closures. Nearly everyone agreed the staff is knowledgeable and professional.
But with only 150 followers on Instagram, it’s pretty clear the Mariposa Visitor Center in its current incarnation is hopelessly analogue.
To some extent, that is by design.
The Mariposa Visitor Center has largely ceded the online world to a separate entity, the Yosemite Mariposa County Tourism Bureau (YMCTB). The bureau gets its financing through a lodging tax and is completely separate from the machinations involving the Visitor Center.
The bureau’s online presence is slick and impressive and most locals never see it because its social media advertising buys are geo-fenced outside the local area. Why spend money telling locals what they already know?
The answer may be that Mariposa County needs to see its reflection in the mirror.
But the debate over who should run the visitor center has also revealed a kind of social media gap, between the broad based branding of the area done by the tourism bureau and the kind of targeted social media that could drive tourists to the Yosemite Climbing Museum, the Mariposa Museum and History Center or even a high school football game on a Friday night.
That is a niche below the 10,000 foot branding of the tourism bureau and a virtual space the current visitor center doesn’t reach.
But does that mean the Mariposa Visitor Center should give up its prime location to another bidder, as Mariposa Supervisor Miles Menetrey bizarrely suggested? He compounded the embarrassment by suggesting the chamber doesn’t care about the community.
The turnout suggested otherwise.
In reality, we need two visitor centers: A physical location and a virtual one.
Vuillaume has earned the right to be part of that conversation.
And the chamber would be wise to put an end to the parochialism and make her an ally.
They should start by taking her to lunch. Oakhurst has a few nice locations I’d suggest. A change in scenery can do some good.
Tom Lyden is a staff writer for the Mariposa Gazette and can be reached at tom@mariposagazette.com.
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