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 exhibit, American Bittersweet: The Life & Writing of Willa Cather
• Tour the extensive Collections & Archives at the National Willa Cather Center
• Visit the Willa Cather Childhood home and other sites related to her life and writing
• Take in a performance at the Red Cloud Opera House
• Enjoy a delicious lunch served in our beautiful 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 and gift shop

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—Relax with a tasty boxed lunch ($15 per person, inc. tax/tip) or a customized menu at extra cost. Or let us plan a perfect prairie picnic—in season.
• Red Cloud offers historic lodging for small groups of 15 or less. Plans for the Hotel Garber, a 27-room boutique hotel adjacent to the National Willa Cather Center, are underway (opening 2024). Hastings has options for larger groups (40 mins away). 

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! Don’t “fly over”—stop thru!

❧ Exit off the Interstate to a scenic rural byway and straight into our delightful prairie world! ❧

View our full-color Profile Sheet, attached below, for additional information.

For additional information or to plan or book your group tour:

Rachel Olsen, Director of Education & Engagement at rolsen@willacather.org or (402) 746-2653