Welcome to Historic Red Cloud: Great Stories Grow Here!

Set amidst brick-lined streets, charming homes, historic buildings, and the immense beauty of the prairie, Red Cloud offers a glimpse into a storied American past while maintaining a progressive vision for the future. Willa Cather’s prairie novels introduced the world to the community and have left indelible impressions in the minds of her readers. Yet rich literary history is only one part of this unique town’s present-day draw. Your off-the-beaten path adventure will let you explore a rural lifestyle while also immersing yourself in arts, culture, history, and recreational pursuits.

 
 

Featured Attraction

 

Red Cloud Tourism and Commerce

Community News

May 31, 2023

Learn more about the 68th Spring Willa Cather Conference, Cather at the National Statuary Hall in Washington, DC, Art at the Starke Round Barn, RCHS Alumni Weekend and much more in the May 2023...READ MORE...

May 31, 2023

The Willa Cather National Statuary Hall Selection Committee is pleased to announce that Willa Cather’s bronze sculpture by artist Littleton Alston will be dedicated and unveiled for the first...READ MORE...

 

Events

Complex & Brilliant: Willa Cather at 150
June 01, 2023 to June 03, 2023

The 68th annual Willa Cather Spring Conference, held during Willa Cather's sesquicentennial year, provides an opportunity to pay homage to the author's life and legacy here in Nebraska. Just as Cather wrote about the "certain qualities of feeling and imagination" possessed by Nebraska's early immigrant homesteaders in her essay, "Nebraska: The End of the First Cycle," we will commemorate Cather's 150th birthday by examining the evolution of her own writerly imagination.

@Burlington Depot
May 31, 2023 to August 19, 2023

We are delighted to bring a special exhibition by Hastings artist Betty Kort to the newly restored Burlington Depot! The Ties That Bind draws on the artist's generational ties to the land—a story that is nearly universal on the Plains.

@Red Cloud Opera House Art Gallery
May 31, 2023 to July 15, 2023

The 2023 Spring Conference in Red Cloud will be a celebration of 150 years of Willa Cather’s life and work. As part of that celebration, we will recognize the 100th publication anniversary of one of her greatest novels: A Lost Lady. In conjunction, we will host an invitational exhibit,Visions Seen in the Air, which will feature the work of well-known national and regional artists and be on exhibit in our Red Cloud Opera House gallery from May 16 to July 15, 2023. An artists’ reception will be held during our Spring Conference, June 2, 2023, at 4:30 p.m.

5:15pm @Farmers & Merchants Bank
June 01, 2023

Join us at the newly restored Farmers and Merchants Bank building to preview our ongoing interpretive work. Once complete, the Farmers and Merchants Bank lower level will be home to a new exhibit that tells the story of how Red Cloud came to be and the people who helped shape its history—and its future! We invite your comments and ideas as we create an exciting new stop in our first museum home!