International attraction

Movie cameras arrived in Wakita in 1995. A building at the intersection of Main and Locust streets served as the location office.

Now it’s the home of the memorabilia-laden Twister Museum, which has been in operation since a few months before the movie was released. The Twister Museum and a five-block walking tour of film sites still attract visitors to Wakita.

Museum director Linda Wade (her husband was Wakita’s mayor during the Twister era) said the museum gets visitors every day in the summer. Sightseers come from every state and from spots all over the globe. The guest book (the museum’s third; two others were filled) was signed recently by tourists from the Central African Republic and Antwerp, Belgium.

Elaborating on how “Twister” has helped keep Wakita alive, Schmitz said the movie has kept the town in people’s minds. The name is familiar to the whole world, according to Wade, who said, “I took a vacation to Mexico, and I was wearing one of my ‘Twister’ shirts and a taxi driver literally wouldn’t let us out of the taxi until I gave him my shirt. He gave me a shirt from Cancun, and I gave him my ‘Twister’ shirt because he was a ‘Twister’ fan.”