Heritage Highway
Willa Cather State Historical Site, NE

Willa Cather, the Pulitzer Prize winning authors of such works as My Antonia and O Pioneers!, spent much of her childhood in Red Cloud, located along the Heritage Highway. The Willa Cather State Historical Site in Red Cloud allows visitors to see six period buildings that were important to her writing, including her childhood home. In this home, the family Bible still exists, where you can see where Willa Cather's date of birth has been changed from 1873 to 1876. Cather's attic bedroom can be seen with the original rose wallpaper. Other buildings that can be seen are the Burlington Depot, St. Juliana Catholic Church, Grace Episcopal Church, and the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank building. The bank building houses interpretive displays on Willa Cather's life, and provides space for the Willa Cather Archives.

The town of Red Cloud itself plays an important part in Cather's literature, and is known as Sweet Water, Hanover, Frankfort, Moonstone, Haverford, Black Hawk, and Skyline, depending on the work. Another factor that played a major role in Cather's writing is the Nebraska prairie. The Willa Cather Memorial Prairie is a national historic area and is a large tract of unbroken prairie nearly 600 acres in area. This prairie allows visitors to view the prairie as Cather would have seen it when she first arrived in Nebraska. The prairie is as strong as any character in her novels.