A cool little re-creation of the original fort, Fort Kearny holds a couple of distinctions: 1) while neither the beginning or the end of the Pony Express Trail, it was considered the home of it; 2) the fort provided protection for the Union Pacific workers from the natives while they completed their half of the trans-continental railway.
There were plenty of artifacts in the museum. Many were found on-site during excavation, but other were donated to make the museum. The kids liked looking through, and noticed that they were very similar to what we saw at Fort Vancouver.
There was a nice little diorama of what the fort looked like. This was neat, since very few of the buildings have been re-created. It's hard to get the sense of what a fort would be like when it's just on paper.
Outside there were a few re-creations. They didn't really give a sense of being there, however.
A replica of the blacksmith's shop. This was actually pretty cool. Unfortunately, it being a weekday, there was no one there working in the shop. Again, timing is our enemy...
The kids have done a lot of learning on this trip (and have a ton left to do!). I make sure they stop and take the time to read all of the signage. It's always surprising down the road when one of them brings up an obscure fact they remember from one of these stops.
This was the area they kept their horse - to protect them from raids. Although most of the time this fort was here the area was pretty stable, it was still the edge of the frontier, as they saw it.
Replicas of some of their armament. We wondered if these would do any good against raiders, or if they were more for display and ceremonies...?
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