C A T H E R F O U N D A T I O N Enter the 1880's in Historic Red Cloud, Nebraska... Willa Cather's Window to the World
Country Tour Around Red Cloud
Click on the numbers to identify the sites. You can also scroll down the page to see all identifications.
1. The Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation moved to the restored Opera House at 413 North Webster in February 2003.
2. As you travel south on Highway 281, you will see to the left a large cottonwood grove on the top of a knoll about half a mile east of the highway. This is the setting for a LOST LADY.
On this hill, in 1870, the first settlers in Webster County built their stockade. Later Silas Garber built his home there.
Willa Cather describes the cottonwoods as throwing sheltering arms to left and right of the house. The Garber house burned in the 1920's, but the cottonwoods and the lilac hedge are still there. It was in the cottonwood grove that the Cather children and their friends used to picnic as described in A LOST LADY.
3. Proceeding south, you come to the Republican River, the river of O PIONEERS!, MY ÁNTONIA, ONE OF OURS, A LOST LADY, LUCY GAYHEART, and many short stories. On the bluff south of the river, you may ascend to the Indian grave and view the Republican River Valley. Here Willa Cather used to bring her younger brothers and sisters to spend the day, entertaining them by reading IDYLLS OF THE KING (Tennyson) and "Sohrab and Rustum" (Matthew Arnold). It was from this bluff that Willa Cather saw the plow against the sun, described in MY ÁNTONIA.
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4. Continue four miles south (on 281) to the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie. Owned and managed by Cather Foundation, this 610 acre tract of virgin mixed-grass prairie exemplifies the land that Cather loved and wrote about in her novels. "As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea...and there was so much motion in it, the whole country seemed somehow, to be running."
—My Ántonia
5.Return toward Red Cloud, but turn left at the first road after you cross the bridge. From this road you get a good view of the Red Cloud depot which figures in the early part of MY ÁNTONIA, and in "The Sculptor's Funeral."
6. Proceeding on this road west, pause just before you cross the railroad track. To the left toward the river is the location of the mill in ONE OF OURS. The mill dam was destroyed in the flood of 1935.
7.At the first turn north after crossing the railroad tracks, you come upon an abandoned cemetery. This land was part of the Miner Ranch, and was given by J. L. Miner to be the Catholic Cemetery. About 1904 most of the graves were moved to the Red Cloud Cemetery.
Interest for Cather scholars lies in the fact that here is buried the prototype for Larry Donovan of MY ÁNTONIA. He died of tuberculosis in 1901. On his tombstone is the inscription, "Gone but not forgotten."
8. West of the mill dam was the island which appears in "The Treasure of Far Island," "The Enchanted bluff," and LUCY GAYHEART. The island is also a wistful memory in ALEXANDER'S BRIDGE.
In LUCY GAYHEART winter prevails on the island. Cather mentions black willows, twisted scrub oaks, and the bronze light of a winter sunset. In "The Enchanted Bluff" it is summertime with yellow-green willow wands, new sand, and skeletons of turtles and fish. In "The Treasure of Far Island" the island marks both the beginning and the fulfillment of a dream.
This island was the playground for the Cather and Miner children. They came southwest from Red Cloud across the open fields to the river where they used an old boat to reach the island. The island was destroyed in the flood of 1935.
9. Continuing on this road west, you travel across the Miner Ranch to Indian Creek, also a playground for the Cather and Miner children. On the banks of Indian Creek, Silas Garber and other early settlers decided on the name Red Cloud for their town.
10. Follow the road north to Highway 136, turn left on the highway, go one mile, then turn right on the Bladen road. This road leads to the Divide. This may have been the one Alexandra traveled in O PIONEERS! She was the first to look at this country with "love and yearning." Five miles north on this road and to the right are the shelving draws which Cather describes.
11. Seven miles north of Highway 136, on the Bladen road, stands the Dane Church. Active in the early history of this church was Yance Sorgesen, a Norwegian immigrant farmer, who hired a Czech named Ondrak to paint a picture behind the altar. He chose "Christ in the Garden." When Willa Cather took her father to see it, Mr. Cather observed that the halo looked like a ring of cheese. Willa was furious. Later a tornado destroyed the little church, and when Ondrak heard it, he cried, "My Yesus! My Yesus! Blown all to hell!"
12.West of the Dane Church one mile — at the crossroads — is the former location of the suicide grave in MY ÁNTONIA. Cather describes it as a little island of tall red grass.
13. Continue two miles west, turn north (right). The first landmark on this road is the New Virginia Church, which was built by Virginians. The Cathers did not attend this church, which is Methodist, but went to the Baptist services held in the old Catherton schoolhouse farther north. Looking 1/2 mile east of the New Virginia Church you see the site of the sod school house Willa Cather attended her first year in Nebraska.
14.On the way from the river to the Divide, you will notice the land grows rougher, with clay banks where dugouts were often built. Along this road there were, in Cather's day, many prairie dog towns which have since been destroyed.
15.A mile and a half north of the New Virginia Church, turn left and go half a mile. Here on the left side of the road, is the location of the Cather homestead — the Burden homestead in MY ÁNTONIA. Here Willa Cather came in 1883. Even then she was aware of the light air, the earth, the sun and the sky, with hawks circling overhead.
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16.Continue one-half mile west, turn right and go two miles north, then right again and go one mile east. You are now on the Divide. In "The Enchanted Bluff" Cather speaks of the "windy plain that was all windmills and cornfields and big pastures." In O PIONEERS! she mentions the furrows that "often lie a mile in length" and the frank, joyous, young "open face of the country."
17. Proceeding one and one-half miles east, you find the George Cather home, the setting for ONE OF OURS. In the pasture west of the house Mr. and Mrs. George Cather built a dugout in 1873.
Willa's cousin, G. P. Cather, son of George Cather, was the prototype for Claude Wheeler in ONE OF OURS.
18. Originally, George Cathers's two sisters, Jennie (see "Macon Prairie") and Alverna, both of whom died of tuberculosis, were buried in an apple orchard north of the George Cather home. In later years, however, the bodies were moved to the Catherton cemetery, a half-mile east and a half-mile south of the George Cather home. Here also are buried William and Emily Ann Caroline Cather, Willa's grandparents, the Burden's in MY ÁNTONIA.
Cather has written many beautiful descriptions of cemeteries. In Neighbour Rosicky she says, "The moonlight silvered the long billowy grass that grew over the graves and hid the fence; the few little evergreens stood out black in it, like shadows in a pool."
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19. Go one-half mile south, two miles east to the Bladen road, then north to Bladen, named for Ellen Bladen Gere, daughter of the founder of the Lincoln STATE JOURNAL. Mr. Gere's three daughters were friends of Willa Cather. When they visited Willa, the four of them used to stop in Bladen for ice cream.
20.On the south-east edge of Bladen lies the Bladen cemetery, where G. P. Cather, hero of ONE OF OURS is buried. "He died believing his own country better than it is, and France better than any country can ever be. And those were beautiful beliefs to die with."
21.Proceed three miles east of Bladen, turn south a mile and a half to the Cloverton cemetery where John and Anna Pavelka are buried. Anna and John Pavelka are Ántonia Shimerda Cuzak and Anton Cuzak of MY ÁNTONIA, and the Rosickys of "Neighbour Rosicky."
Willa Cather wrote in "Neighbour Rosicky," "But this was open and free, the little square of long grass which the wind forever stirred. Nothing but the sky overhead, and the many-coloured fields running on until they met that sky..."
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22. Proceed south one mile across Highway 4. On the right hand side of the road stands the farm where Ántonia brought up her children. South of the house is the fruit cave described in MY ÁNTONIA, from which the children emerged in a burst of light and life.
23.Go a half-mile south to the corner. A half-mile west lies the site of the Hugo Pavelka home, mentioned as the place of Rudolph Rosicky in "Neighbour Rosicky." The area has now been leveled for agricultural purposes.
24.From this corner, one-half mile south of the John Pavelka place, turn left, go one mile to the highway. Turn to the right, go south on Highway 281 two miles. At the eleven mile corner north of Red Cloud remains what is now called the Tin School House. On this site in 1874 stood a sod school house. Mrs. George Cather (Mrs. Wheeler of ONE OF OURS) rode horseback from her home six and a half miles west to teach the three month term in the sod school house. This was the grasshopper year and money was scarce. Mrs. Wheeler, the Aunt Georgiana of "A Wagner Matinee," was a well-educated easterner.
25.Continue on the highway south toward Red Cloud. Just outside the city to the left and north of Crooked Creek are the banks which provided clay for the early brick yards in Red Cloud. In 1883 Red Cloud business buildings were made from the handformed brick. One of these, Mr. Miner's store, at 3rd and Webster, still stands.
26.Just north of Red Cloud you will cross Crooked Creek, one of Willa Cather's favorite playgrounds. This creek is described in A LOST LADY. "The way the creek wound through his pasture, with mint and joint-grass and twinkling willows along its banks."
