August 16

Today we went to Harold Warp's Pioneer Village in Minden, NE. It has 100 antique tractors and 350 antique automobiles. It has over 50,000 different objects there. They show America from about the 1880s to the 1960s with all that has been used in homes and farms. They have collections of anything you can think of from pencils to lamps to barbed wire to toasters to musical instruments to radio tubes. We spent 6 hours there and covered all the isles of things, I think. We didn't spend much time in any one place. It is phenomenal. If any of you are in the area, it is worth going.

Sarah, you are always wanting to use a feather for an ink pen. Here are two quills and the ink wells that held the ink.

This is what a general store would have looked like 100 years ago. It  would have been like our Walmart or Meijer. They sold food, tools, medicine and clothes. On the counter is a roll of paper. They didn't have paper or plastic bags for the things you bought. Instead, they tore off a piece of paper the correct size and wrapped them up. Then they took the string from the spool to the left of the paper and tied up the package.

This shows some of the shirts, hats and other type clothes you could buy. Many of the people didn't buy dresses and shirts because they couldn't afford them so the mother or older girls made their clothes. They would buy fabric at the store or use the sacks that flour and other foods came in.

This is a sod house. They would cut the grass and dirt under it into squares then stack them up on each other until they made the walls of the house. They even put sod on the top of the house. You can see grass growing on the roof of this house. The sod houses would have just a dirt floor. Think how dirty babies and little kids who played on the floor would get!

Can you see the where the grass used to be and how the pieces of sod are stacked on each other? This made a very warm house. When they first lived in this part of Nebraska, there were very few trees so this was a very quick and easy way to build a house.

This is a sleigh that the horses would pull when there was snow on the ground. Notice that there are no wheels, just runners. How do you think the people would stay warm when they rode in this? Brrrrr. Sarah and Katie, I thought you would like this one. It is pink!

This is a horse-drawn mail truck. This doesn't look much like your mail truck, does it? It is also much, much smaller too.

This was a stage coach which was pulled by horses. They had no cars, trucks, buses or trains when this was used about 160 years ago. This is how many people would travel across country although not many people traveled. There were no windows and the roads were just dirt. All the dust would blow into the stage coach and it would be hot or cold inside too.





All these things were in the Pioneer Village. They had arrows to guide you around the buildings so you could see everything in an organized manner. When we left, I asked the man how far a person would have walked if they followed every arrow and went up and down every aisle. He said it has been estimated somewhere between 5 and 10 miles. I believe it. We were tired!!!!!!