The Santa Fe Trail wagon ruts are still visible near Lakin in Western Kansas. You can walk across the little dam, past the tree and right out to the original trail, but there isn’t a lot to see.

Here’s a closer view of the ruts. The ruts are running diagonally from top left toward the lower right. It’s still not what you’d call much to see, and the “Wagon Ruts” sign isn’t terribly helpful.

For places like this where the is little left to see, a smart addition would be a “look through” sign like this one, shared with me by Doug Mackenzie. You look through the sign, and it shows you where things used to be.

If you stand in the right place and line up the outline of the courthouse with the actual courthouse in the distance, you can see the locations and outlines of other buildings that were there in 1920.

Imagine a similar design showing wagons and people walking. When you looked through the sign and lined up the horizon, the outlines of wagons and people would line up with the remains of the Santa Fe Trail ruts. I think that would be cool.

Here’s the Kansas Historical Marker at the site, describing how to find the ruts.

Another obvious addition is any mention of the Indigenous people. The marker mentions “attack” but no context or story about the conflict between people here. It would be another way to add value and meaning to the scant remains of the old Santa Fe Trail.

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Every small town has some empty windows downtown. Some are empty buildings, some are buildings being used for storage, and some are service businesses that just don’t have a lot to put in their windows. Here are three ideas I saw on my trip through Cowlitz County, Washington.

Make a mini-museum.

Work with the local museum to make a temporary display in the windows. This works even for tiny outdoors display cases, which you sometimes see on old jewelry store buildings. The photo at the top is a mini-museum display I saw in Castle Rock, Washington.

Put in a white picket fence

This picket fence was also in Castle Rock. The service business inside didn’t have a lot to put in their windows, so they filled them with this attractive alternative.

Doodle on the windows

An artistic person with some window chalk put these wonderful vines in the window in downtown Kelso, Washington. Much better than just an empty window.

If you’re interested in filling empty buildings, have you thought about dividing them up into shared spaces? 

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Even buildings used for junk storage can dress up their windows and contribute positively to your downtown. Photo by Becky McCray

Every small town has empty buildings downtown. Whether they are completely empty or just used for storage, they can make your downtown look vacant. If the building has windows, though, there’s an opportunity to dress them up a bit and maybe even promote another business at the same time.

In the picture above, a building used for storage is also being used to advertise another business that’s located across town. Here’s a previous display in the same windows:

Rather than leave the windows bare, the owner rented just the window display space to a retail store. Photo by Becky McCray

In Elkhart, Kansas, I saw two more good examples. For one, they made a custom banner to hang in the window and make it look like boxes in a display window:

The illusion of looking and seeing boxes stacked gives this ad more attention-getting power. Photo by Becky McCray

That’s definitely better than just empty windows or another vacant building.

In another set of windows, a local business used promotional items they already had on hand:

This satellite business used existing advertising materials (signs, stand-ups and banners) to fill the windows of this empty building. Photo by Becky McCray.

At first, I didn’t realize the building was vacant because the windows looked so lively.

In Hollis, Oklahoma, Betty Motley told me how a local group printed special banners to hang in windows. They found images online to use. This one is an empty building with an old-fashioned barber shop theme.

It’s all an illusion. There is no barbershop, no barber pole. That’s all on banners hung inside the windows.  Photo via Betty Motley

They even painted the door with barbershop lettering to complete the illusion. They also did another building using an antiques store as the theme.

Stacey Colledge from Central City, Iowa, sent me the photos below. They used historic photos of actual old-time businesses in their town, and printed them on static cling material so they can be moved when a building gets rented. A total of 9 has cost them about $2,000, she said.

Volunteers proudly pose with one of their historic photo window clings. Photo via Stacey Colledge

Not only did they put the window clings up, they put out a welcome mat, too! Photo via Stacey Colledge

Look into the future

So far, we’ve seen windows that featured businesses from the past and present, but what about businesses from the future? You know your town has a past, but do you spend enough time reminding people that your town has a future?

Here’s one town that did. Longview, Texas, used a window decal to show a vision of the building occupied by a future business.

This building would make a great boutique hardware store! Photo via Kevin Green, News-Journal Photo.

Read more about this one at the Longview News-Journal.

Window displays don’t have to be all business. They could be creative, too. Renton, Washington, did a series of window displays featuring a fairy tale theme.

Art is a smart way to dress up windows of empty buildings. Photo via Tory Franklin

Read more about it at the Renton Reporter.

Filling Your Empty Buildings

You don’t have to stop with decorating the windows. You can actually fill empty buildings with business, no matter how small your town is. Join Deb Brown and me for a 2-part webinar on Filling Empty Buildings at SaveYour.Town. The deadline to register is June 19, 2018.