Ten Treasures
The 10 most prized artifacts of Nebraska museums. Nebraska has many fine museums, and those museums have many fascinating and important items on display. Which are the best? That may be a matter of opinion, but writer Lisa Bennett talked to staff at 10 Nebraska museums, asking each to name just one item from their collection – the most prized artifact.
Asking a museum curator to name a favorite artifact is sort of like asking a parent to name a favorite child. Even so, a short list of items emerged as the rarest, most valuable, or most favored by the public. Some have gained national attention; a few have become icons of the institutions that own them. In this excerpt, we present three with their stories.
By Lisa Bennett
“Archie”
University of Nebraska State Museum (Morrill Hall)
University of Nebraska at Lincoln
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Elephants in Nebraska? Surprisingly, yes. And not just your average elephant. Weighing in at nearly 15 tons and measuring 14 feet high at the shoulder, “Archie” is the largest mounted mammoth skeleton in the United States.
Named Archie from his scientific name Archidiskodon , archaeologists discovered his bones in southwestern Nebraska in 1922. Researchers estimate that Archie lived around 30,000 years ago.
Curator of Paleontology Mike Voorhies wryly describes the excavation as “a truly mammoth undertaking.” The project called in a team of horses to clear away more than 40 feet of overburden. For months, a team of technicians and scientists worked on scaffolding to piece Archie together.
Nebraska is fossil-rich, Voorhies says, because it is more than 95 percent covered with sedimentary deposits dating to the Cenozoic Era, which began 65 million years ago. These deposits consist of sand and gravel, volcanic ash and blankets of silt from ancient dust storms. These processes buried – and preserved – mammoths and other ancient wildlife such as rhinoceroses, horses, camels and sabertooth cats.
This plethora of Nebraska mammoth fossils makes the museum's Elephant Hall one of the world's most complete exhibits of elephant evolution, and a popular destination on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus.
Union Station
Durham Western Heritage Museum
Omaha
When
asked to name her facility's most prized artifact, Marketing Director Lori Brunnert
didn't hesitate. “The building itself,” she said. “It's absolutely beautiful.”
The Union Pacific Railroad built the former Union Station in 1931 as the company's showpiece headquarters. Designed by architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood, the art deco style building was the first of its kind in Omaha .
In its heyday, 64 trains and 10,000 passengers passed through the station daily. When passenger travel stopped in 1972, Union Pacific donated the building to the City of Omaha . It opened as the Western Heritage Museum in 1975. Local businessman Charles Durham spearheaded a $22 million renovation project completed in 1996; the museum was renamed in his honor. On January 15, 2006, the building celebrates its 75 th anniversary.
Inside, the Main Waiting Room measures 160 feet long by 72 feet wide. It features sculptured plaster ceilings with painted gold and silver leaf trim. Six restored bronze, copper and glass chandeliers hang in the 65-foot-high ceiling. The area has cathedral-like plate glass windows, a patterned terrazzo floor, blue marble columns and black marble wainscoting. (Union Station also appears on the magazine cover.)
B-17 “Flying Fortress”
Strategic Air and Space Museum
Ashland
Though it is the stuff of legends and Hollywood lore, the reality of the B-17 “Flying Fortress” is equally impressive. During World War II, B-17s downed thousands of enemy planes and dropped more than half a million tons of bombs. Flying from air bases in England , B-17s penetrated deep into Nazi-controlled Europe and were able to withstand heavy combat damage.
Yet of the 12,731 B-17 aircraft built from 1935 to 1945, more than a third – 4,750 – were lost on combat missions. Fewer than 100 exist today. Its rarity is one reason, says Curator Brian York, that the B-17 is his museum's most popular exhibit.
The Air Force relegated the bomber to the museum in 1959. It has been on continuous display ever since. Currently it is finished with camouflage colors and painted in the colors of “King Bee,” a B-17 from the Eighth Air Force's 100th Bomber Group. The first director of the Strategic Air and Space Museum , Carl A. Janssen, was the original commander of the King Bee.
(The complete story appears in the January/February 2006 issue of Nebraska Life Magazine.)