Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer

Open Air Living History Museum (Railroad Town) With An Edward Durell Stone Building · Grand Island, Nebraska

The Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer is a history museum on a large site on the north edge of Grand Island, in central Nebraska, that tells the story of the settlers who built towns on the plains in the late nineteenth century. It has two very different halves. The main building, opened in 1967, is a white, modern structure designed by the architect Edward Durell Stone, set on an island surrounded by a moat of water and reached by a causeway; inside are galleries on pioneer life. Across the grounds is Railroad Town, an open-air village of roughly sixty historic buildings moved here and arranged as an 1890s prairie town, staffed in summer by costumed interpreters who cook, work the forge and talk as townspeople. Also on site are a rotunda of Native American and Old West collections, a Pawnee-style earth lodge, a steam locomotive and farm machinery. It is a local favourite and worth a half day in summer, but it is far thinner in the off-season when Railroad Town is closed.

3133 West Highway 34, Grand Island, Nebraska, 68801, United States

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The typical pattern: in the summer season, roughly May to September, open daily or most days, roughly 9 am to 5 pm, with Railroad Town and its interpreters working; in the off-season the indoor buildings only, on shorter hours and possibly fewer days, closed on major holidays. Special evening events run on their own schedule. The traps that ruin a visit are arriving between October and April expecting Railroad Town, arriving in the last hour and having no time for the outdoor town, and coming in State Fair week without a hotel. Confirm current times before relying on them.

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