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The Country Tour highlights 21 historic sites related to the life and writing of Willa Cather. You may schedule a guided tour of these sites by contacting the Willa Cather Foundation; or, you may purchase a detailed map for a self-guided tour.
Heading south out of Red Cloud, 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 1920s, 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.
Continuing south, you come to the Republican River, the river of O Pioneers!, My Antonia, 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 Antonia.
Four miles south (on 281), visitors will find the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie. Owned and managed by the Willa Cather Foundation, this 608-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 Antonia
Old Mill Dam
As you begin the tour, one of the first stops you will make is the Old Mill Dam, the site of the mill location in One of Ours. The mill dam was destroyed in the flood of 1935.
"Claude told his mother he meant to take Enid Royce for a sleigh-ride. Enid was the daughter of Jason Royce, the grain merchant, one of the early settlers, who for many years had run the only grist mill in Frankfort County. She and Claude were old playmates; he made a formal call at the mill house, as it was called, every summer during his vacation, and often dropped in to see Mr. Royce at his town office.
The mill road, that led off the highway and down to the river, had pleasant associations for Claude. When he was a youngster, every time his father went to the mill, he begged to go along. He liked the mill and the miller and the miller’s little girl. He had never liked the miller’s house, however, and he was afraid of Enid’s mother. Even now, as he tied his horses to the long hitch-bar down by the engine room, he resolved that he would not be persuaded to enter that formal parlour, full of new-looking, expensive furniture, where his energy always deserted him and he could never think of anything to talk about.
Claude was thinking, as he walked, of how he used to like to come to the mill with his father. The whole process of milling was mysterious to him then; and the mill house and the miller’s wife were mysterious; even Enid was, a little— until he got her down in the bright sun among the cat-tails. They used to play in the bins of clean wheat, watch the flour coming out of the hopper and get themselves covered with white dust.
Best of all he liked going in where the water-wheel hung dripping in its dark cave, and quivering streaks of sunlight came in through the cracks to play on the green slime and the spotted jewel-weed growing in the shale. The mill was a place of sharp contrasts; bright sun and deep shade, roaring sound and heavy, dripping silence. He remembered how astonished he was one day, when he found Mr. Royce in gloves and goggles, cleaning the millstones and discovered what harmless looking things they were. The miller picked away at them with a sharp hammer until the sparks flew, and Claude still had on his hand a blue spot where a chip of flint went under the skin when he got too near.
Jason Royce must have kept his mill going out of sentiment, for there was not much money in it now. But milling had been his first business, and he had not found many things in life to be sentimental about. Sometimes one still came upon him in dusty miller’s clothes, giving his man a day off. He had long ago ceased to depend on the risings and fallings of Lovely Creek for his powder, and had put in a gasoline engine. The old dam now lay “like a holler tooth,” as one of his men said, grown up with weeds and willowbrush." ”“One of Ours
Murphy Grave
Shortly after seeing the site of the Old Mill, you will 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 Antonia. He died of tuberculosis in 1901. On his tombstone is the inscription, "Gone but not forgotten."
“Larry Donovan was a passenger conductor, one of those train-crew aristocrats who are always afraid that someone may ask them to put up a car-window, and who, if requested to perform such a menial service, silently point to the button that calls the porter. Larry wore this air of official aloofness even on the street, where there were no car-windows to compromise his dignity. At the end of his run he stepped indifferently from the train along with the passengers, his street hat on his head and his conductor's cap in an alligator-skin bag, went directly into the station and changed his clothes. It was a matter of the utmost importance to him never to be seen in his blue trousers away from his train. He was usually cold and distant with men, but with all women he had a silent, grave familiarity, a special handshake, accompanied by a significant, deliberate look. He took women, married or single, into his confidence; walked them up and down in the moonlight, telling them what a mistake he had made by not entering the office branch of the service, and how much better fitted he was to fill the post of General Passenger Agent in Denver than the rough-shod man who then bore that title. His unappreciated worth was the tender secret Larry shared with his sweethearts, and he was always able to make some foolish heart ache over it.”— My Antonia
The Island
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.
Miner Ranch
Next, you’ll stop at the Miner Ranch near 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.
Bladen Road (Road 800)
This road leads to the Divide. This may have been the one Alexandra traveled in O Pioneers! As you travel this road, you will notice the slow, steady climb in elevation. The Divide marks the high middle ground between the Republican River and the Little Blue River, near where Cather’s family originally homesteaded.
“When the road began to climb the first long swells of the Divide, Alexandra hummed an old Swedish hymn, and Emil wondered why his sister looked so happy. Her face was so radiant that he felt shy about asking her. For the first time, perhaps, since that land emerged from the waters of geologic ages, a human face was set toward it with love and yearning. It seemed beautiful to her, rich and strong and glorious. Her eyes drank in the breadth of it, until her tears blinded her. Then the Genius of the Divide, the great, free spirit which breathes across it, must have bent lower than it ever bent to a human will before. The history of every great country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.”— O Pioneers!
Clay Shelving Draws
Clay draws are examples of land formations used to provide initial shelter for the pioneer families. A cave type structure was often dug into the side of the hill with a sod house added on the expanded front entry.
“But for the piece of rusty stovepipe sticking up through the sod, you could have walked over the roof of Ivar’s dwelling without dreaming that you were near a human habitation. Ivar had lived for three years in the clay bank, without defiling the face of nature any more than the coyote that had lived there before him had done.” -O Pioneers!
Dane Church
North of Highway 136, on the Bladen road (Road 800), 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. Cather was furious. Later a tornado destroyed the little church, and when Ondrak heard it, he cried, "My Yesus! My Yesus! Blown all to hell!"
Suicide Grave
At a crossroads near the Dane Church is the former location of the suicide grave in My Antonia. Cather describes it as a little island of tall red grass.
“Years afterward, when the open-grazing days were over, and the red grass had been ploughed under and under until it had almost disappeared from the prairie; when all the fields were under fence, and the roads no longer ran about like wild things, but followed the surveyed section-lines, Mr. Shimerda's grave was still there, with a sagging wire fence around it, and an unpainted wooden cross. As grandfather had predicted, Mrs. Shimerda never saw the roads going over his head. The road from the north curved a little to the east just there, and the road from the west swung out a little to the south; so that the grave, with its tall red grass that was never mowed, was like a little island; and at twilight, under a new moon or the clear evening star, the dusty roads used to look like soft grey rivers flowing past it. I never came upon the place without emotion, and in all that country it was the spot most dear to me.”— My Antonia
The New Virginia Church
Continuing west, 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 east of the New Virginia Church you see the site of the sod school house Willa Cather attended her first year in Nebraska.
Prairie Dog Towns
As the land grows rougher, with clay banks where dugouts were often built, many prairie dog towns used to thrive, but have been destroyed since Cather’s time.
“The dog-town was spread out over perhaps ten acres. The grass had been nibbled short and even, so this stretch was not shaggy and red like the surrounding country, but grey and velvety. The holes were several yards apart, and were disposed with a good deal of regularity, almost as if the town had been laid out in streets and avenues. One always felt that an orderly and very sociable kind of life was going on there.”
Cather Homestead
Northwest of the New Virginia Church is the location of the Cather homestead — the Burden homestead in My Antonia. Willa Cather came here in 1883. Even then she was aware of the light air, the earth, the sun and the sky, with hawks circling overhead.
“I tried to go to sleep, but the jolting made me bite my tongue, and I soon began to ache all over. When the straw settled down, I had a hard bed. Cautiously I slipped from under the buffalo hide, got up on my knees and peered over the side of the wagon. There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. No, there was nothing but land— slightly undulating, I knew, because often our wheels ground against the brake as we went down into a hollow and lurched up again on the other side. I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man's jurisdiction. I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it. I did not believe that my dead father and mother were watching me from up there; they would still be looking for me at the sheep-fold down by the creek, or along the white road that led to the mountain pastures. I had left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I knew not whither. I don't think I was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be.”— My Antonia
The Divide
Shortly after visiting the Cather Homestead, you will be 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."
George Cather Home
Proceeding east, you’ll 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.
“As the house began to take shape, Enid came up often in her car, to watch its growth, to show Claude samples of wallpapers and draperies, or a design for a window-seat she had cut from some magazine. There could be no question of her pride in every detail. The disappointing thing was that she seemed more interested in the house than in him. These months when they could be together as much as they pleased, she treated merely as a period of time in which they were building a house.”— One of Ours
 Catherton Cemetery
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, southeast of the George Cather home. Here also are buried William and Emily Ann Caroline Cather, Willa's grandparents— the Burden's in My Antonia.
Cather wrote 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."
Bladen
Head 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.
Notable sites are the Bladen Opera House, where Annie Pavelka had her own seat, and the original home of G.P. Cather.
Bladen Cemetery
Southeast 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."
Cloverton Cemetery
Southeast of Bladen lies the Cloverton cemetery, where John and Anna Pavelka are buried. Anna and John Pavelka are Antonia Shimerda Cuzak and Anton Cuzak of My Antonia, and the Rosickys of "Neighbour Rosicky."
“For the first time it struck Doctor Ed that this was really a beautiful graveyard. He thought of city cemeteries; acres of shrubbery and heavy stone, so arranged and lonely and unlike anything in the living world. Cities of the dead, indeed; cities of the forgotten, of the “put away.” But this was open and free, this little square of long grass which the wind for ever stirred. Nothing but the sky overhead, and the many-coloured fields running on until they met that sky. The horses worked here in summer; the neighbours passed on their way to town; and over yonder, in the cornfield, Rosicky’s own cattle would be eating fodder as winter came on. Nothing could be more undeathlike than this place; nothing could be more right for a man who had helped to do the work of great cities and had always longed for the open country and had got to it at last. Rosicky’s life seemed to him complete and beautiful.”— “Neighbour Rosicky”
Pavelka Farmstead
Proceeding south across Highway 4, one finds the farm where Antonia brought up her children. South of the house is the fruit cave described in My Antonia, from which the children emerged in a burst of light and life. (Restored and managed by the Willa Cather Foundation and maintained by the Nebraska State Historical Society.)
The Pavelka Farmstead was chosen as one of twelve Hidden Treasures in Nebraska by Heritage Nebraska in 2010.
“We turned to leave the cave; Antonia and I went up the stairs first, and the children waited. We were standing outside talking, when they all came running up the steps together, big and little, tow heads and gold heads and brown, and flashing little naked legs; a veritable explosion of life out of the dark cave into the sunlight.”— My Antonia
Tin School House
The eleven mile corner north of Red Cloud is where the tin school house once stood. 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.
“Presently they stopped before a little one-storey schoolhouse. All the windows were open. At the hitch-bar in the yard five horses were tethered— their saddles and bridles piled in an empty buckboard. There was a yard, but no fence— though on one side of the playground was a woven-wire fence covered with the vines of sturdy rambler roses— very pretty in the spring. It enclosed a cemetery— very few graves, very much sun and waving yellow grass, open to the singing from the schoolroom and the shouts of the boys playing ball at noon. The cemetery never depressed the children, and surely the school cast no gloom over the cemetery.” ”““The Best Years”
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.
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."
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