Top 10 Western Museums of 2009
By: Johnny D. Boggs 04/01/2009
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Great Platte River Road Archway
Kearney, Nebraska
We opted for a little brass, a lot of sass and a ton of vision with our history when we selected this year’s top museums based on their grand showcases of the American West last year. If you’re zipping along I-80, the Great Platte River Road Archway—True West’s Museum of the Year—might send you into a spin (it being the only historical educational monument granted air rights over a federal interstate highway). But when you pull yourself from underneath your airbag, check out this grand adventure in Kearney, Nebraska.
Like a fort straddling I-80, the Archway documents the nearly 500,000 men, women and children—trappers and traders, pioneers on the Oregon Trail, Pony Express riders, stagecoach jehus and passengers, railroaders—who headed west between 1843 and 1869.
Yet this privately owned museum doesn’t stop there. It covers the Lincoln Highway, and it celebrates sandhill cranes and classic cars, American Indians and drive-in theaters and diners—150 years of Westward migration, transportation and communication—relying on a knowledgeable staff (in period attire), computer graphics, life-size dioramas and a 1961 rag-top Cadillac.
Outstanding exhibits bring the Oregon, California, Mormon Trails, and a whole lot more, to life, drawing visitors ranging from former President Bill Clinton to actor Jack Nicholson (his movie About Schmidt was filmed at the Archway).
An architectural marvel, the $60 million, 79,000-square-foot museum opened in June 2000, and it refuses to slow down (unlike truckers on I-80). Future plans include a Pawnee earth-lodge reproduction and an American Indian interpretive center, the addition of the Nebraska Firefighters Museum and a celebration of the Lincoln Highway’s centennial in 2013.
Brass, sass, vision ... and a 1,500-ton structure crossing 308 feet of interstate highway, anchored by 60-feet-long, 25-feet-high, two-feet-thick concrete abutment walls, this is one roadside attraction that’s definitely worth the stop.
877-511-2724 • Archway.org
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C.M. Russell Museum
Great Falls, Montana
The buffalo (okay, bison) has to be the animal most identified with the West, and that shaggy beast got its due when “The Bison: American Icon, Heart of Plains Indian Culture” opened in December at the museum dedicated to artist Charles M. Russell. Filling three galleries, the permanent exhibit—three years and $1.5 million in the making—unveils the bison’s role in American history.
Comments (4)
No mention of the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas? Their Remington and Russell collection surpasses all.
The Archway is truly one of the best western history museums we have ever had the pleasure of touring. A must see for anyone traveling I-80 across Nebraska! Makes you feel like you are living the events as they are depicted.
on the way to texas way back in 2001, we saw the platte river road archway for the first time...just rises up out of the plain at you...quite a surprise...really different...
Kudos to the #1 Museum Choice, the "Archway". As a Pawnee tribal member involved with the archway staff in several activities I believe they are very deserving. The upcoming June event they are planning, Dancers of the Plains & welcoming the Pawnee back to their homeland ... will be a historic event. Not only are they preserving the past, but in their quest they are making history by hosting the homecoming event and coordinating with the Neb.Council of Indian Affairs to have their mtg inducting the Pawnee into their commission. Staff has helped with the effort to keep their traditional seeds alive ... and developed friendships between a tribal nation and the people of Neb. I am so proud of them and thank you for recognizing their good ways. - Deb Echo-Hawk
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