New, improved features, layout to benefit public
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This large and in-charge piece is a steam engine, used in place of a tractor, to pull a thresher machine through a field. -
This snapshot back in time shows the barn and house being moved into the shell of the Wesley Huenefeld Agricultural Museum. It’s dated somewhere between 1985-86.
Agriculture is a keystone in Hamilton County and so too is the history behind it.
There is no better place to showcase said history than the Wesley Huenefeld Agricultural Museum, a part of Aurora’s Plainsman Museum. The ag-specific historical showcase is set to reopen officially to the public June 7 after more than a year closed.
“What actually happened was they outgrew the main building, the Plainsman building, the main rotunda building,” Plainsman Executive Director Tina Larson recounted on the ag museum’s beginnings. “So in the early 1980s they decided they were going to need to focus on agriculture because people were kind of just bringing stuff and leaving it here from what I understand.”
As a salute to agriculture, the ag museum was born. An original goal was to have it set up to loosely mirror a farmstead, with an old farmhouse, barn and workshop.
“They brought the house and the barn and the blacksmith shop here and built the building around it,” Larson added. “The frame of the building was up and they moved these in, we have pictures of it, and then they built the building around it.”
The amount of agricultural artifacts coming in from community members quickly outgrew the original space. An extension has since been constructed.
To read more, please see this week's print or e-edition.
