Away and Across the Plains: Pioneer Trails Through Nebraska
By Jeff Kappeler
Discover how pioneers passing through Nebraska territory in their journey west had a profound influence on the settling of the state. This presentation focuses on the lives and experiences of the emigrants and the pioneer inhabitants. It includes authentic artifacts used on the trail pertaining to the areas of transportation, food, clothing, tools and bedding.

Buffalo Bill Cody Reminisces About His Early Life on the Plains
By Stuart C. Lynn
Stuart Lynn brings to life Buffalo Bill Cody in this living-history program, reminiscing about his youth and early years as a Pony Express rider, young soldier and buffalo hunter, as well as his experiences scouting for the Army in Kansas and Nebraska. Lynn brings Cody up to the famous buffalo hunt with the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia in 1872.

The Courage to Continue: Changing Homesteads in Nebraska
By Cherrie Beam-Clarke

Beam-Clarke, in period attire with Irish brogue, depicts Nebraska life on the prairie, 1870 to 1885. Based on fact, she draws every emotion from the audience through a dramatic one-act play. Selling the homestead, the family travels by wagon to begin again as cattlemen in the remote western Nebraska Sandhills. Relive the trials of building a sod house, lightning storms, crying for rain, rattlesnakes, extreme loneliness and the never-ending wind. Delight with the 4th of July, a present-less Christmas and American pride. This program is appropriate for all ages.

Daniel Freeman: America's First Homesteader
By Darrel W. Draper
Hear Daniel Freeman's amazing story as Darrel Draper portrays "Old Number One" in full costume. It is a Chautauqua-style, humorous and historically factual account of America's first homesteader and the impact of the Homestead Act in settling the West. Recommended for ages 10 to adult.

Dust Bowl Descent
By Bill Ganzel
Ganzel located and interviewed a number of individuals who survived the Depression by using photographs taken by the Farm Security Administration. This program follows his journey in locating these people, recounts their stories and juxtaposes recent photographs with 60-year-old images to provide a compelling account of the triumph of the human spirit over hard times.

Exploring the West With John C. Fremont
By Vernon L. Volpe
Some of the best guides for travelers on the Oregon Trail were the reports and maps of U.S. Army explorer John C. Fremont. His engaging reports, written with his wife Jessie Benton, provided Western emigrants with a useful guide for travel and created two new national heroes—Kit Carson and Fremont himself. Fremont's expeditions also stimulated American interest in acquiring California and Oregon, and the ambitious army officer contributed to the winning of California in the Mexican War.

Fencing, the Windmill and the Steel Plow
By Warren Rodgers
In the early 19th century, pioneers from the humid regions east of the Mississippi began to move westward to the level, treeless, semi-arid prairie. Because the tools and implements with which they were familiar no longer served them in this new environment, all attempts to conquer the prairie failed until they learned to adapt in innovative ways. This presentation explores three major technological advancements that enabled these pioneers to prosper on the vast prairies—fencing materials such as the Osage Orange and barbed wire; the windmill and Nebraska's great array of homestead mills; and the steel plow.

John A. Creighton: Blazing the First Internet
By Brian Kokensparger
Portraying John A. Creighton, Kokensparger helps the audience envision the building of the first “Internet”– the first transcontinental telegraph. Although his brother, Edward, was the chief superintendent of the project, John was in a unique position to observe the installation of the line and did his share to help the Creighton crew win the race to Salt Lake City. At the end of this Chautauqua-style program, Kokensparger comes out of character to make connections between today's Internet and the telegraph network.

Major John Dougherty: Trapper to Statesman, A Life on the Plains

By Doug Kuony

The early history of America’s westward expansion into what would later become Nebraska is full of colorful people and places. Two such examples are Major John Dougherty and Fort Atkinson, the only military installation west of the Missouri River from 1820 to 1827. Dougherty’s career began in 1809 when he hired on with the Missouri Fur Company at age 18. Over the course of his life he worked as a trapper, an expedition guide, an interpreter, as sub-agent and agent to the Native American tribes, a politician and a plantation owner. Throughout most of the 1820s, Dougherty served as the Indian sub-agent and interpreter at Fort Atkinson and later at Bellevue. Dressed in period clothes, Kuony’s presentation is based on Dougherty’s experiences but has a loose format that encourages questions from the audience.

Meet Buffalo Bill
By Terry Lane
William F. Cody reflects on his life as express messenger, teamster, buffalo hunter, scout, actor, showman and builder of the West through a series of true-life adventures--from Bill’s perspective, of course. Length and content can be varied according to audience.

Mormon Communities and Trails in Nebraska
By Gail George Holmes
This program is about some 40,000 religious refugees, 1846-1866. They developed four trails and six communities in Nebraska. They published three early Nebraska newspapers, including the first in Omaha. A Mormon lawyer organized Nebraska's first congressional election and devised a way to break the southern state's deadlock on admission of Nebraska to the Union as a territory.

The Mormon Trail at the Missouri
By Gail George Holmes
This presentation explores the challenges facing the Mormons during their westward migration across the Missouri River and up the Platte River.  Holmes discusses 90 Mormon communities in the Middle Missouri Valley which the refugees from western Illinois and southeastern Iowa built.  There they regained their health and resupplied their covered wagons to go on another 900 miles to settle in the Great Salt Lake Valley.

Nebraska: Crossroads of the Western Fur Trade
By Darrel W. Draper
This humorous, one-hour presentation, composed from literature, is an entertaining and amusing summary of the history of the fur trade, including trading companies, personalities and the achievements of fur traders and mountain men who lived in or passed through Nebraska. This tabloid-style review of the oddities and ironies of the industry has been carefully researched but is humorously presented in a sensationalized style. It recounts some of the bizarre happenings that resulted in the most important discoveries of land and routes enabling the U.S. to claim and populate the West.

Nebraska Farm Families During the Depression
By Dorothy Rieke
This historical program by Rieke reveals both the sad and the humorous experiences of a Nebraska farm family in the Great Depression of the 1930s. 

Nebraska's Winding Road to Statehood: In the Footsteps of a Female Settler
By Sara Brandes Crook
Barbara Kagi Mayhew Bradway, a female settler, recounts the issues of Nebraska's territorial days. In a first-person portrayal, Sara Brandes Crook recounts Bradway's impressions as an early permanent white settler. She also explores the Underground Railroad. Bradway was the older sister of John Kagi, who was a close confidant to John Brown.

Overland Trails: The Children on the Trail
By Renae M. Hunt
With over 352,000 emigrants traveling the Oregon, Mormon or California trails, one in five were under the age of 16. Many of these youths kept journals. This program discusses how these children traveled and relates some of the stories from their journals. This program is appropriate for all ages.

Promise in a New Land: Migrating and Settling in Nebraska
By Cherrie Beam-Clarke
Beam-Clarke, with Irish brogue and period costume, depicts a Nebraska settler between 1845 and 1870. Based on historical fact, this is a first-person one-act presentation. Laugh and cry as the stories transport you in time to sail the stormy ocean, ride the wagon trail, and fight a prairie fire. The captivating first person stories tell of successful crops, losing loved ones, dancing, grasshoppers, hard work and becoming an American. The program has a sequel entitled "The Courage to Continue." Both are educational and entertaining. This program is appropriate for all ages.

Reminiscences of an Oregon Trail Pioneer
By Maurine Roller
The Oregon (Overland) Trail linked the East with the West via the "Great American Desert." Thousands of men and women chronicled their journeys from familiar homelands to their Promised Land. Roller researched more than 400 women's diaries and created a composite pioneer woman, Cora Garvey, who left Missouri in 1853 to find a new life in Oregon. Cora, now at journey's end, looks back over the last six months. In this living-history presentation, she reminisces about cholera, encounters with Indians, accidents, humorous anecdotes and everyday toil, dispelling the myths and stereotypes surrounding women who traveled the Overland Trail.

Train Songs and Tales of the Westward Rails
By David Seay
What is it about trains that so easily engages one's imagination? Climb aboard with David Seay as he sings and plays a variety of railroad inspired songs and tells tales of the westward expansion of the rails towards Nebraska's western border in the mid-1800's. This upbeat excursion features storytelling, banjo, harmonica, whistles, and sing-alongs.

Westward Ho!
By James Denney
James Denney, former writer-photographer for the Omaha World Herald's Sunday Magazine of the Midlands, opens the curtain on the historic Oregon, California and Mormon trails as they appear today. Museums, markers, trail swales, sites and monuments, with quotations from diaries, reveal the pioneer spirit along the 1839-1871 routes. Included are slides of watercolors and sketches by the bullwhacker William Henry Jackson, which depict Nebraska trail travel in the 19th century.

A Young Man's Journey on the Oregon Trail
By Dale Clark
In 1843 an emigrant group of about 1,000 people left Independence, Mo., traveling to Oregon guided by Marcus Whitman. The group included more than 100 women and 600 children. In the next 25 years, over 350,000 emigrants made the 2,000-mile journey in this huge voluntary migration. Many myths have sprung up about this journey. The program is delivered as though Clark is reflecting on the diary and artifacts he kept when embarking on the cross-country adventure he "recreates" as an 11-year-old might have lived it in 1849.