Nederland’s visitor center wasn’t officially open but was still doing a brisk business last week as Jill Dreves helped tourists looking for maps and a place to eat lunch. Dreves then chatted with a local who wanted a quick look inside the newly cleaned and organized space.

Nederland recently hired Dreves, founder of Nederland’s Wild Bear Center, to reopen and run the visitor center, at 45 West First Street.

The center, in a log cabin-style building with its own parking lot near Town Hall in downtown, is open for regular hours, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“It’s a phenomenal location,” Dreves said. “People are walking by all day long.”

The center will be closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays and is expected to stay open through the fall’s leaf-peeping season, closing around Halloween. An official grand reopening is planned for this summer.

Dreves, a longtime Nederland resident, said her love for the quirky mountain town made a job as town ambassador a great fit.

“I love working with the community and visitors,” she said. “There’s just so much that’s cool about Nederland that people don’t know. We want to showcase the best of the town.”

The center operated on limited hours last summer, then was closed this year. Town Manager Johnathan Cain said the original plan was to open in May, but budget cuts meant “we didn’t quite get there.”

“The goal is to keep it open as long and as consistently as possible,” he said. “We can point to all the businesses and all the different things that happen up here. It’s a central hub.”

Dreves wants to use the center to feature local artists, including those who lost studio space after an October fire destroyed the Caribou Village Shopping Center. She’s working with artist Danielle Crouse to help her set up a rotation of local art to display in the center. Crouse, who has lived in Nederland for 15 years and has a home studio, also is painting a mural on one of the center’s walls that will show the mountain peaks, the town and local wildlife.

“We have so many riches here,” Crouse said. “I’m so excited to highlight them.”

To bring in Nederland’s connection to music, the nearby Brightwood Music shop is loaning a guitar for locals and visitors to strum on the benches outside the front of the center.

Inside, there are T-shirts, books by local authors on the area’s history, maps, stickers and cold bottles of water for sale. A history of the area is detailed on a poster on the wall, next to a map of the Netherlands where visitors from the region can add a pin on their hometowns. Nederland’s name traces back to a Dutch mining company and means “lowlands” — a moniker given to the area in relation to the higher elevation Caribou mines.

Other possibilities include small children’s activities and using the space to advertise town events. The town also is hiring a second part-time person to support Dreves.

“This place has a lot of potential,” Dreves said. “I get to be creative in how to grow it.”