2020 was going to be an exciting year for Estes Park Museum’s Director Derek Fortini as they unveiled a new exhibit, exploring what Estes Park was like in the 1920’s.

The exhibit opened in December and museum staff, as well as volunteers were hearing nothing but great feedback. But then the coronavirus pandemic struck the United States, and the the doors to the museum located at 200 4th St, in front of Lake Estes have been shut since March.

But as time went by and the number of COVID-19 cases began to decline throughout September in Larimer County, and museum officials decided to set a reopening date of Oct. 15.

But over the last week, cases throughout the county have been on the rise, which caused Fortini to pull the plug on reopening, and have to wait a little bit longer.

“We decided three weeks ago that we were going to reopen, and it took us really all that time to get the gallery back together. But then as the reopening date got closer, the number of cases continued to rise and we felt it’d be better if we postponed our reopening,” Fortini said.

As of 7 p.m. on Thursday, 273 cases of the novel coronavirus have been reported within the county, according to the county’s website. During the week of Sept. 13 through Sept. 20, only 61 cases were reported and the county was on a downward trend.

Besides a handful of full-time staff members, the museum is run fully on volunteers, which Fortini says most of them are older in age, and therefore at higher risk to have serous side affects of COVID-19.

“We can’t expose our volunteers, which is our upmost concern. We can’t expose them, our staff and the public to this virus, so it really came down to making sure we’re all staying safe,” Fortini said.

Despite the museum remaining closed for now, officials are aiming to reopen the gallery by Oct. 26, but if the trends continue upward that will not happen.

Although smiling faces of guests young and old, haven’t been strolling through the halls of the museum since March, like many other museums, Estes Park has been offering virtual programming and will continue to do so until they can reopen their doors to the public.