NEBRASKA CITY – A new national landmark, researchers of America’s western movement and restorers of the Table Creek Indian Treaty Monument.

Isaiah Yott received the award for the Kregel Windmill Factory Museum, which became one of 21 sites in Nebraska to receive national landmark status.

Yott: “It’s a big deal for Kregel. It’s a big deal for the town. I am proud and I am honored and I have the privilege to sort of be at the head of that organization, doing what we do to preserve,  you know, our culture, our heritage of that place, it’s contents and even back to the ideals and morality that the Kregels would have had.”

 

The museum is described as the only remaining, intact windmill museum in America. The Kregel family established business in Nebraska City in 1879 and operated a commercial operation until 1991. Site developers say the factory was left just as it was, as if the workers went out to lunch and never returned.

The society awarded

renovators of the Veterans Memorial Building, which was built in 1929 but closed in 2007. Volunteers rallied for the building and completed a restoration that includes 122 new windows, elevators, ADA bathrooms, roof, performance stage and commercial kitchen.

The Larry Falk Award went to the Nebraska City Rotary Club for its collaboration in restoring a monument that marked the 1857 treaty with the Pawnee Indians that opened new portions of Nebraska to immigrant settlement.

Randall Rehmeier said the club was first interested in replacing a medallion that was missing from the monument, but learned that some stones that were etched with the names of the 16 Indian chiefs also needed to be replaced.

Rehmeier: “Thank you so much to the historical society for doing this. Doing a project like this, you start looking at the history and how all of it fits together, To be able to preserve something like this,  it’s going to perpetuate more history.”

 

Historical society member Kevin Boos accepted an award for author Dean Knudsen for his research in America’s western movement and his book on photographer William Henry Jackson.

 Boos: “I spent years with my family traveling the Oregon Trail and doing research on it. One of the best people that I worked with the entire time, probably the best, was Dean Knudsen.”

Susan Quinn, an award-winning teacher for her Literacy Pioneer program and historical society president for 13 years, received the organization’s first presidential award.

Quinn had a hand in the society’s adoption of the Russell, Majors & Wadell home for the Old Freighter’s Museum and preservation of the Nelson House.

Quinn: “I spent a long time in the different houses because somebody had to be there if someone came. I always enjoyed visiting with people and what expectations they had about what they were going to see. Usually they had stories to tell me.”

The society’s current president Kathy McKillip said the awards recognize the often daring and difficult work of historical preservation.