On a hill in the canyons of Lincoln County near North Platte, 20 wooden grain bins and a massive barn stand above Interstate 80, forming one of Nebraska’s most unusual antique destinations.

Each octagonal bin wears a steel roof, its white boards weathered by decades of Nebraska wind and sun, worn thin enough in places to show streaks of natural wood underneath. A boardwalk passes numbered doorways, giving the place the feel of a small town. Inside, each room is arranged with the kind of care that makes it feel recently left.

Much of what visitors see there was shaped by Lori Clinch, whose work helped build Grain Bin Antique Town and whose death in February 2022 left a quiet ache across the property and the North Platte community. She was 57.

“She always said this was her dream job,” her husband, Pat Clinch, said. “She loved people, and she loved antiques. She had a passion for decorating. She could make anything look good.”

The place still reflects the way Lori and Pat built it – one idea, one haul and one display at a time.

It started in 2010 with a single grain bin the couple found near Paxton. The structure had outlived its original use, but Lori saw something else in it. She turned it into a retreat where she and Pat could talk and unwind after long days raising four boys.

“We’d go out there in the evenings and just sit,” Pat said. “It was a little getaway. She made it cozy.”

Then, during a Sunday drive, they found 14 more bins on a farm in southwest Nebraska. The wooden structures dated to the years after World War II, when farmers were encouraged to store grain on their own land instead of relying on centralized elevators. Shipped in kits from Wahoo, the bins were once common across the Plains but are now nearly gone.

The farmer who owned them said he had been thinking about burning them.

Lori wrote him a letter, and it worked. Instead of losing the bins to a burn pile, the Clinches set about moving them. It was not simple work. The roads were narrow, the canyon walls close. Lori drove a flatbed with one bin while Pat hauled two on his own truck.

Before long, they were hauling the bins home, sometimes scraping canyon walls as they worked through the narrow roads.

“Lori was part of the moving crew,” Pat said. “She’d have one on her flatbed, and I’d haul two on mine.”

 

BY 2012, GRAIN Bin Antique Town was open. It quickly became a destination for travelers from across the country and overseas. Some came for the rare architecture. Others came for the welcome waiting inside.

The bins became the place where Lori did the work she did best: arranging, joking, welcoming and turning old objects into small scenes people wanted to linger in. She knew how to make a room feel finished without making it feel precious. A crock, a lamp, a weathered sign or a stack of enamelware could become part of a display that felt both playful and lived-in.

Lori had grown up around antiques. She graduated from North Platte High School in 1982, earned her LPN degree from Mid-Plains Community College and worked as a surgical nurse at Great Plains Health before devoting herself to raising the couple’s boys. She married Pat in May 1991 and soon began writing a weekly humor column for the North Platte Telegraph, a role she held for two decades.

Her stories were eventually syndicated in more than two dozen newspapers nationwide. She also published two books, Don’t Make Me Pull Over and Are We There Yet?, collections of family stories drawn from everyday life.

She handled the bookkeeping for Pat Clinch Construction, helped run a rental business and poured herself into Grain Bin Antique Town.

Her close friend and co-worker, Terrie Mooney, remembers when the business had only a handful of bins. Lori invited her to help for “a few days.” Mooney stayed more than six years.

Laughter followed Lori everywhere. She was animated and expressive, quick with a joke and quick to bring other people into it. She and Mooney became known for Facebook videos inspired by duos like Carol Burnett and Tim Conway, Laverne & Shirley and the Blues Brothers.

“She was my defibrillator,” Mooney said. “She made me laugh all day for almost seven years.”

Together, they cleaned barns thick with dust, emptied sheds full of forgotten heirlooms and uncovered surprises, including a Civil War-era saddle still marked with medallions. When rustic décor surged in popularity, Pinterest-minded brides arrived looking for bed springs, beakers and other pieces for centerpieces and displays.

Even the hardest days felt lighter with Lori around. She could turn any chore into a performance.

“She never stopped,” Mooney said. “Physically, mentally, emotionally – she worked harder than anyone I’ve ever known.”

At Grain Bin Antique Town, Lori greeted customers by name when she knew them and made easy conversation when she didn’t.

When she died, help came from several directions. The Clinches’ sons – Jestin, Micki, Joseph and Cory – stepped in to help. Tourism groups, fellow antique sellers, friends and customers reached out in whatever ways they could.

“You can’t argue with God when he says, ‘I want to listen to some of Lori’s jokes now,’” Mooney said. “You just have to hold onto her memory.”

Today, the grain bins are still open Fridays and Saturdays, filled with antiques Lori would have loved. Her handwriting remains on some labels. Her books sit near the checkout counter. Some displays are still arranged exactly as she left them. Visitors still move through the bins, stopping at labels, displays and rooms she arranged.

For Mooney, Lori’s presence still feels close. On her first visit back after Lori’s death, she caught her foot on a raised board and fell straight through it. Sitting there, she laughed.

“You ornery woman,” she said aloud. “I know that was you.”

Grain Bin Antique Town still draws visitors with its rare bins, weathered boards and hilltop setting. For many, Lori remains part of what they find there..