The Mayhew Cabin, built in 1854, 13 years before Nebraska won statehood, played a role in the Underground Railroad but has been closed to the public since 2019. (Paul Hammel/Nebraska Examiner)
NEBRASKA CITY, Nebraska – After nearly a decade of neglect and finger pointing, peace and plans for a positive future are breaking out at one of Nebraska’s leading historical attractions.
People are also reading…
Mayhew Cabin and John Brown’s Cave has been closed since 2019 after flooding damaged one of Nebraska’s two Underground Railroad sites on the National Park Service’s “Network to Freedom.”
The nonprofit that owns the 20-acre site had blamed the city for the damage and filed a lawsuit. When it was dismissed, the former Mayhew Cabin board posted a sign outside the visitors center saying Nebraska City had “killed” the attraction.
Amid the bitterness, and a study that projected a likely unattainable need of $20 million in repairs, the cabin, the cave, a visitors center and a collection of historic structures have stood idle, deteriorating as the seasons passed, becoming overgrown with grass, weeds and fallen trees.
But a newly revamped board of directors seeks to change that and embark on a new chapter.
They’re not only hoping to restore a positive relationship with the city, but to repair and reopen the historic cabin by this summer’s July 4 celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday.
“We’re losing a generation of kids who haven’t been here to Nebraska City to learn about the Underground Railroad,” said Doug Kreifels, a Nebraska City native and the recently installed treasurer of the site’s revamped Board of Directors.
Around this historic Missouri River town, people are starting to notice something stirring at the once mostly abandoned site.
Brush and debris have been removed along the border fence, and there are plans for a clean-up day in early April. An application is pending with a local foundation to finance the $27,000 job of replacing the hand-hewn, cedar-shingle roof and shoring up the cabin’s foundation.
The accusatory sign has been painted over, and statements blaming the city for past problems of the complex have been removed from a newly redesigned website done by the new president of the board, Darryl Hogan.
Hogan, a Canadian, is a descendant of a couple who escaped slavery in Missouri with the help of famed abolitionist John Brown. Hogan has been interviewed frequently and is often asked to speak about his family’s history.
Kreifels and fellow board member Robert Nelson, a former Omaha World-Herald columnist and native of Falls City, said they have been regularly quizzed during recent lunches in Nebraska City about what’s up at the Mayhew Cabin.
Sara Crook, a professor emeritus of history at Peru State College, said it would be a huge loss if at least the cabin wasn’t reopened for public tours.
“That cabin is a treasure,” Crook said. “It’s the most visible site of the Underground Railroad in Nebraska.”
“To lose that would be a tragedy,” she said.
The cabin, built with cottonwood logs in 1854 by Allen and Barbara Mayhew, was the first Nebraska location listed on the Park Service’s “Network to Freedom” of Underground Railroad sites. In 1854, statehood for Nebraska was 13 years away. Slavery wasn’t outlawed in the Nebraska Territory until 1861.
In 1859, the cabin hosted 11 enslaved people and a newborn for breakfast as they fled into anti-slavery Iowa after being liberated by Brown and John Kagi, a newspaper correspondent and top lieutenant of Brown’s, in neighboring Missouri.
Kagi, who was living in Nebraska City at the time and helped found the Republican Party in the state, was part of the party that visited the cabin, Nelson said. It’s not clear if Brown ever visited the Mayhew Cabin, he said.
The cabin, which was relocated in the late 1930s due to a highway construction project, became a tourist attraction, with the owner digging a tunnel-like cave that extended under the structure to a nearby ravine to draw in more visitors.
While there was no proof that the cave was ever used by those escaping slavery — and more indication that it was a cellar to store potatoes — the site became best known as “John Brown’s Cave” until more recent years.
Nebraska City Mayor Bryan Bequette said thousands of school children once toured the cave and nearby Arbor Lodge on field trips, and he’s hoping that those tours can be revived and a new, positive relationship established with the revamped board of the cabin site.
“It’s been a missing part of our city’s portfolio as far as tourism and our history,” Bequette said. “We’re looking forward to sitting down with the revived board and brainstorming what we can do to help.”
That brainstorming will likely include what to do to improve drainage in the ravine adjacent to the cabin site to avoid future damage from flooding.
Nelson, the new board’s vice president and a historian/author who’s studied southeast Nebraska’s link to abolition, said long-range plans may include restoring the cave, whose entrance into the ravine was damaged by flooding.
“It was a kitschy, weird thing that wasn’t real,” he said of the cave. “But it got people here — to listen and learn the story of the Underground Railroad.”
The new board will eventually have to determine which structures can be saved on the site. Besides the cabin, there’s a large, brick interpretive center that has a sinking foundation and mold issues. Behind it are three structures once intended to become a “historic village” – a church, a log cabin schoolhouse and a depot that once stood in nearby Otoe, Nebraska.
The church, Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church, was founded in 1879 in Nebraska City, and is thought to be one of the first African-American churches west of the Missouri River. But it and the other two structures have no connection to the Underground Railroad.
If you climb through a gap in a chain-link fence and slip through patches of weeds and head-high tree saplings, you can also find an old barn in the back of the property that is filled with old wagons, display cases and signs.
Kreifels and Nelson, during a recent visit to the site, said no decision has yet been made by the new board about the fate of the extra buildings, but it’s likely that the interpretive center will have to be demolished.
It is possible, they added, that the “historic village” structures and a portion of the property will be sold for development, and to raise funds to sustain the cabin.
Cook, who does historic portrayals of Barbara Mayhew, said she’s long believed that the Mayhew Cabin is the most important structure and that the rest can be sold or torn down.
Kreifels, a retired Nebraska state worker, said he seeks a storefront in downtown Nebraska City where artifacts from the Underground Railroad can be displayed and the history of the Mayhem Cabin can be interpreted.
Nebraska City already hosts nearly a dozen museums, including ones focusing on the Civil War, the construction of windmills and the Lewis & Clark Expedition.
Both Kreifels and Nelson said they’re hoping the days of finger pointing are over and that the new Board of Directors will usher in a new, positive direction for the Mayhew Cabin.
“The site has been closed for too long,” Kriefels said. “It’s long overdue that we start telling the story again.”
This story is provided by States Newsroom, a nonprofit state news network and Blox Digital content partner.
