Stuhr Museum of Grand Island, NE Takes Us Back to Pioneer Days

Once you park on the well cared-for acreage of the Stuhr Museum of Grand Island, Nebraska, you focus on the attractive main building-the Stuhr Building. An inviting bridge over a placid pond leads to the Stuhr Building that houses the ticket counter, gift shop and several exhibits from the 1860s to the 1920s such as wagons and 19th century clothing. This main building was designed by Edward Durell Stone who also designed the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Both the Stuhr Building exhibits and information introduce visitors to the museum, the history of the area and what they will find on the grounds.

But Stuhr Museum of Grand Island, Nebraska is much more than a single building or a simple museum. Stuhr Museum is a nationally recognized educational and cultural organization with over sixty restored 100-year-old buildings on nearly 200 acres. Stuhr Museum is a look back at how the country grew from the earliest Indian settlements, through the pioneer settlements of the west and up into the 20th Century. It is an outdoor as well as an indoor museum that brings today's generation face-to-face with yesterday.

An assortment of Stuhr Museum buildings house any number of exhibits that include life-size sculptures and Native American, pioneer and Old West memorabilia. The Stuhr Museum has a Pawnee Earth Lodge, and 1860's log cabin settlement and farm-complete with farm animals, as well as Railroad Town, a recreated prairie community.

Not only does Stuhr Museum Railroad Town include some 60 century old buildings, but during the summer, the shops are open with "townspeople" re-enacting the roles of merchants, marshal, blacksmith, tinsmith, families and more. Visitors get to immerse themselves in pioneer days as they watch the tinsmith making a tin cup or a cookie cutter or hear the blacksmith's rhythmic hammer as he fashions metal drawn from the glowing coals.

The Amanda Glade Millinery Shop with it's costumed seamstresses make hats from lovely fabrics. They'll even make hats for visitors. For rest, relaxation and refreshment, a visitor to the Stuhr Museum can check out the Silver Dollar Concessions or the Traveler's Rest Hotel. Railroad Town has the usual bank, clinic, school and so much more. But the capstone of the town is Henry Fonda's birthplace home.

Stuhr Museum has been so faithful in its recreations that the location has been used in several films including "Sarah, Plain and Tall," Disney Channel's "Adventures of the Old West," as well as "My Antonia."

Throughout the year, Stuhr Museum is alive with an assortment of activities from special exhibits, contests and special tributes to pioneer celebrations with era appropriate games and entertainment, many hands-on for the entire family.

Stuhr Museum is a jewel that should not be missed.