Group Tours
Visit Red Cloud—Our unique small town on the prairie and meet Willa Cather, Nebraska’s foremost citizen and author of O Pioneers!, My Ántonia & Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather once said, “I always return to Nebraska.”
Visit one of Nebraska’s premier historic attractions in a cultural oasis on America’s Great Plains. The National Willa Cather Center preserves, operates, and interprets the largest assembled group of nationally-designated historic buildings related to any author in the United States. To visit Red Cloud is to encounter a town and entire landscapes, largely unchanged, as world-famous author Willa Cather knew them as a young girl—and would later write about.
Enjoy an immersive and historic experience and let us create the perfect itinerary—and meal—for your timeframe. Basic tour packages are $10 per person or $25 per person (including a boxed lunch, with tax).
What Your Group Will Experience
- Explore our permanent exhibits, American Bittersweet: The Life & Writing of Willa Cather and Making A Place: A Long History of Red Cloud, which opened March 2024
- Visit the fully-restored Willa Cather Childhood home—which reopened on the author's 150th birthday on December 8, 2023—and other sites related to her life and writing in our guided Town Tour
- Tour the extensive Collections & Archives at the National Willa Cather Center
- Take in a performance at the Red Cloud Opera House
- Enjoy a delicious lunch served in our beautiful Red Cloud Opera House Art Gallery
- Hike, picnic, star-gaze dark skies, or watch the sunrise and sunset at the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie—a 612-acre tract of untilled land as Willa Cather would have known it
- Explore scenic country roads or take a Cather Country Tour of outlying properties and settings, including the Pavelka Farmstead made famous in Willa Cather's My Ántonia
- Shop the National Willa Cather Center Bookstore, which includes curated books and gifts
Exclusive Offerings for Bus Tours
- Customized tour itineraries within your timeframe
- Customized catered or boxed lunch options
- Free meal & tours for bus drivers/tour escorts
- Complimentary bus parking
- Discount on group lodging in Red Cloud
- On-site tour coordinator
Meals & Lodging
- Delicious catered lunches served in our Red Cloud Opera House Gallery or a perfect prairie picnic.
- Red Cloud offers historic lodging for small groups of fifteen or less.
- The boutique Hotel Garber will open in late 2024/early 2025.2024).
- Nearby Hastings has lodging options for larger groups.
In the Center of Everything
Red Cloud is in south-central Nebraska on the Kansas border—just over an hour between I-70 & I-80 on U.S. 281—and 20 miles north of the Geographic Center of the USA. Exit off the Interstate to a scenic rural byway and straight into our delightful prairie world.
For additional information or to plan or book your group tour:
Nick Powers, Visitor Services Coordinator at npowers@willacather.org or (402) 746-2653.