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 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 or a perfect prairie picnic..
  • Red Cloud offers historic lodging for small groups of fifteen or less. Plans for a boutique hotel are underway (opening 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.