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.

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

This is a sequel to the program “Promise in a New Land.” Beam-Clarke, in period attire with Irish brogue, depicts Nebraska life on the prairie, 1870 to 1885. Based on historical fact, she continues her story in a dramatic Chautauqua-style presentation. Selling the homestead, they begin again as cattlemen in the desolate Sandhills. Relive trials of building the sod house, lightning storms, crying for rain, rattlesnakes and the never-ending wind. Delight with the 4th of July, Christmas and American pride. The program has a sequel entitled "Grit n Gumption.” 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.

Excess Baggage: Riding the Orphan Train

by Charlotte Endorf

Endorf traveled more than 8,500 miles, seeking the last surviving riders and descendents to document the real-life stories of the children who rode the Orphan Trains between the years 1854 and 1929. Dressed in period attire, Endorf entertains and educates audiences of all ages about this little known Nebraska history.

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.

The Forts of Nebraska

By Jeff Barnes

Nebraska's forts were among the first and last on the Great Plains, built to promote trade, to protect travelers and settlers, to fight the Indian tribes and then to keep the peace. Barnes tells of Nebraska's 12 military forts and what today's visitors will find at the sites.

The Great Unknown

By Mr. Conrad

This is an interpretive program for audiences in 1^st through 5^th Grades. It shows what life was like on the Oregon Trail by following a fictional family on their journey. Using his guitar and some folksy original music, Mr. Conrad makes this bit of history fun to learn.

Grit n Gumption

By Cherrie Beam-Clarke

This program is a continuation of stories told in “Promise in a New Land” and “The Courage to Continue.” Reprising her role as Mariah Monahan, in period attire with Irish brogue, Beam-Clarke tells more captivating stories depicting Nebraska life from 1860 to 1895. Hear about children becoming lost in the prairie, dealing with injuries, lack of women in the country, living on cornmeal, need for music and the endless monotonous labor. Learn how they dealt with schooling, cholera, tornadoes and Indians. Educational and entertaining. This program is appropriate for all ages.

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.

John C. Fremont: The Pathfinder

By Doug Meux

Hear Fremont overview his event-filled life as explorer, surveyor, general, politician, and author. Then follow along as he chronicles the first of his five expeditions to the West (with special attention to the Nebraska aspects), including his times with Kit Carson, Peter A. Sarpy, Senator Thomas Hart Benton, and others. Meux portrays Fremont in costume.

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: The Beef State

By John E. Carter

Human beings' relationship with cattle stretches at least 15,000 years. Cattle are wealth, cattle are status, and cattle are important. This presentation will look at that ancient relationship and explore just how Nebraska, once called the Great American Desert, became the largest and best beef producing state in the nation. Birthed out of the Civil War, we chart the tidal change in American eating and look at how our great past has shaped America's future. It is truly one of Nebraska's largest, yet often untold, stories.

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.

The Plains Tribes and the Homestead Act

By Nancy Gillis

While many tribes inhabited the immense tract of land called The Great Plains, interacting with their environment, neighboring tribes, and even European explorers and trappers for centuries, two decades prior to the American Civil War and the two decades following the Civil War brought tremendous changes due to increased tensions in the East and legislation enacted in Washington  – the Homestead Act of 1862.  Nancy Gillis will examine why and how these changes occurred on the Plains for the tribes  by looking at changes in foods, clothing, housing, family structure, gender roles, land control, and political relationships.

Promise in a New Land: Migrating and Settling in Nebraska
By Cherrie Beam-Clarke
Beam-Clarke, as Mariah Monahan, with Irish brogue and period costume, depicts a Nebraska settler between 1845 and 1870. Based on historical fact, this is a first-person Chautauqua-style presentation. Through a spellbinding rendition, viewers are transported in time to sail the ocean, ride the wagon trail, feel the loneliness and fight prairie fires. Laugh and cry with stories of successful crops, dancing, hard work, grasshoppers, losing loved ones and becoming an American. The program has two sequels entitled "The Courage to Continue” and "Grit n Gumption.” 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.

The Twisted Path of Ethanol

By John E. Carter

Economy, mobility, environment, intrigue and innovation intertwine in the complex and surprisingly old story of Nebraska's relationship with industrial ethanol. This saga stretches back to 1899 and winds through amazing stories of the conflicts and tumult of the growth of industrial alcohol, especially as a motor fuel. Controversial to this day, ethanol, as it emerges in the 21st Century, is Nebraska's current 900 pound gorilla. This presentation looks back to the time when it was a chimp and watches it grow up.

What Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Read
By Susanne George Bloomfield
Have you ever wondered what pioneer families did for entertainment, especially during the long winters? They didn't have television and couldn't go to movies or the mall like we do today. To pass the long hours, many pioneer families subscribed to magazines, which offered entertainment for everyone in the family--recipes and household hints, news and travel stories, and puzzles and games. Learn what the pioneers read and share their adventures!

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.