Museum of the Fur Trade

The museum stands on the site of a trading post James Bordeaux kept for the American Fur Company on Bordeaux Creek, east of Chadron. The museum dates the post to 1837, and History Nebraska says it ran until 1876. It was rebuilt in 1960 on its original foundation, a sod-roofed log cabin set into the grassy hillside a short walk from the galleries.

The museum opened in 1955. Charles E. Hanson Jr. built it and gave it forty-eight years as director, board officer and editor of its publications. It owns its collection outright and runs on admissions, sales and donations, with one full-time employee and seasonal help.

Its subject is trade in both directions: what the nations of North America and the traders exchanged, and how each made the goods its own. More than six thousand objects include the oldest known point blanket, from 1775, an 1830 New Mexican serape, beaded deerskin coats from 1820s Manitoba, and a twelve-inch silver cross worn by the Oglala leader Young Man Afraid of His Horses. There are guns associated with him and with Tecumseh, Kit Carson and John Kinzie, and a Civil War era flag of the kind flown by fur company steamers on the Missouri, nine feet long with a hand-embroidered eagle. The collection also keeps crop seeds obtained from Native growers more than 125 years ago, and the museum keeps an heirloom Indian garden.