An Artsy Under-The-Radar Nebraska City Full Of Historic Charm Offers A Fun Quiet Weekend Getaway

The town of Red Cloud, Nebraska is admittedly small and a little out of the way. It has less than 1,000 inhabitants and is 60 miles from the closest interstate. But Red Cloud is a historic gem on the Great Plains visited by celebrities like Paul Giamatti and literary legends like Maya Angelou. So, why are they drawn here? It's not only the perfect atmospheric small town to spend a quiet getaway, but was also the home of classic American author Willa Cather who wrote about frontier life in the 1900s using Red Cloud as the setting of many novels. 

The sheer vastness of the Great Plains seems to have struck Cather, and as she told the Philadelphia Record in 1913 (in an interview preserved by the Willa Cather Archive): "I shall never forget my introduction to it. We drove out from Red Cloud to my grandfather's homestead one day in April. I was sitting on the hay in the bottom of a Studebaker wagon, holding on to the side of the wagon box to steady myself — the roads were mostly faint trails over the bunch grass in those days. The land was open range and there was almost no fencing. As we drove further and further out into the country, I felt a good deal as if we had come to the end of everything — it was kind of erasure of personality."

Fortunately, it's a lot easier to visit Red Cloud today. The town is only a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Nebraska's capital, Lincoln, where you'll find the nearest major airport. Red Cloud also has a tiny airport that can handle small private planes. In August, during the local Lions Club Annual Fly-In, the club even serves a breakfast of freshly-griddled pancakes and sausages at the airport.

Red Cloud is home to the National Willa Cather Center, a collection of historic sites and exhibits dedicated to the author. Cather's writing of Red Cloud painted a vivid description of frontier life in Nebraska in a style that helped to define modern American literature. As the renowned writer Sinclair Lewis put it (in an interview preserved by the Willa Cather Archive), "The United States knows Nebraska because of Willa Cather's books." Seeing these sites together gives a visitor a window into America's frontier past and the mind of one of America's great literary talents.

Today, visitors can step into Cather's childhood home, a simple clapboard house with a white picket fence. Her attic bedroom, described in detail in her writing, still has the original wallpaper she chose as a teenager. The historic district also includes the newly restored Burlington Depot, where up to eight trains a day used to come in carrying grain, livestock, and passengers. At the Red Cloud Opera House, where Cather used to watch traveling shows, visitors can now see live music concerts.

Perhaps the most moving site is not a building but a landscape. The Willa Cather Memorial Prairie is a nature preserve that contains 612 acres of untouched grassland. Here visitors can walk through the prairie or sit on a bench and imagine how Cather's stories come to life. In her most famous novel, "My Ántonia," Cather wrote, "The grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the color of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running."

Perhaps the best time to visit Red Cloud is on a fall weekend. "There's a buzz in the air with harvest traffic, hunters, and the beautiful foliage," writes Jarrod McCartney, the Heritage Tourism Development Director at Visit Red Cloud. "Simply the best time of year to be in Red Cloud in my opinion." This is because autumn is when the harvest is in full swing and the local football club starts their season of Friday night games. Making the season more festive, the Red Cloud Opera House organizes thrift, art, and music events throughout the year. Fall is also a good time to see the Starke Round Barn at work. Built in 1902, it's the largest in the country and is still operating on a working farm. So, if you want to see it, you'll need to call ahead for a visit. For accommodation in Red Cloud, a good choice is the Cather Second Home Guest House where the author penned some of her novels. 

Overall, Red Cloud is a cozy town for a weekend getaway. And, if you are looking for more destinations in Nebraska, consider a few other gems in the state. The underrated city of Kearney has entertainment and shopping and is only about an hour and 15 minutes away. If visiting in winter, make sure to stop by Minden for a peek at this quirky "Christmas City". For a completely different take on the Great Plains, keep traveling north to Niobrara to see how the rivers turn the prairies into an everglade landscape.