Pioneer Village 70th Anniversary By Sharon Black

Pioneer Village 70th anniversary

June 10 and 11 was the 70th anniversary of the museum dubbed ‘the Smithsonian of the West’ in Minden, Nebraska.

Harold Warp did not want old schools and churches to be destroyed so he purchased them and set them on the property that is now Pioneer Village.

Harold Warp, born 1903 in a sod house near Minden, moved with two of his brothers to Chicago with a patent for a plastic window material he had developed. Warp Bros. business is still going under family ownership.

Harold was awarded the Horatio Alger Award in 1979 and the Distinguished Nebraskalander Award in 1984.

Pioneer Village opened in 1953. It is now in the nonprofit Harold Warp Pioneer Village Foundation. Warp died in 1994 at the age of 90 in Florida.

Many repairs were made before the event by many volunteers. The museum was closed for a few years.

The China House, which was an old country school in Kearney County was purchased by Warp. It was built by the WPA, and the country school closed. Warp’s sister, Clara, collected China dishes from the 1850s to the 1950s. There was one dish with Abraham Lincoln’s mother and grandmother’s picture on it. There were not any dishes from 1860 or 1870.

The designs and paintings on the dishes were intricate and amazing.

There were blacksmith demonstrations, and live entertainment the two days of the celebration.