Welcome to Historic Red Cloud: Great Stories Grow Here!

Red Cloud, Nebraska is not just a destination--it’s a place where literature and culture merge with the pleasures of a quiet country town and its prairie surroundings. To visit Red Cloud is to experience a town and entire landscapes, largely unchanged, as world-famous author Willa Cather knew them as a young girl and throughout her life. Red Cloud is an oasis on the prairie.

 
 

Featured Attraction

 

Red Cloud Tourism and Commerce

Community News

September 1, 2025

by Tim Trudell, Omaha Magazine

"The land belongs to the future, Carl; that's the way it seems to me. How many of the names on the county clerk's plat will be there in fifty years...READ MORE...

August 29, 2025

Help raise $75,000 for the September Month of Giving! See highlights from Red Cloud Street Car Days, and get to know Sweet Pea Designs near Lawrence, NE (rural Webster County) plus much much more...READ MORE...

July 31, 2025

Learn more about Street Car Days, new Hotel General Manager Brandi Hitchler, Red Cloud in travel media publications, a job opening at the Cather Foundation, and so much more! 

...READ MORE...

 

Events

Red Cloud Opera House Art Gallery
September 09, 2025 to October 10, 2025

University of Nebraska-Kearney professor of art foundations, photography, and design Derrick Burbul closes out our summer gallery roster with selections from his Myths of the West series. 

Holding both English and photography degrees, Burbul is uniquely situated to explore the visual rhetoric surrounding the myths of the western United States. He was educated at the University of Wisconsin-Superior and earned an MFA in studio arts with an emphasis on photography from the University of Idaho. 

Free exhibit in the Red Cloud Opera House Art Gallery
October 16, 2025 to December 30, 2025

 

We look forward to welcoming Kansas artist Laura Mead and her dream-like botanical prints to the Red Cloud Opera House Gallery this autumn. The works on display, whether printed on paper, polymer clay, or silk, are more than just a representation of the prairie; instead, they are created by and with native prairie plants that are grown and hand-selected for use by the artist, on her own acreage.

Joanna Biggs, Richard Scott Larson & Kirsten Sundberg Lustrum
October 16, 2025

Help us welcome three writers from our first Willa Cather Residency for Writers cohort as they share recent publications! Joanna Biggs, Richard Scott Larson, and Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum will all read excerpts from their books as they reflect on their unique writers in residence experiences. 

5pm @Red Cloud Opera House Art Gallery
October 17, 2025

Please join us October 17, 2025, from 5:00–6:30 p.m. for an artist's reception at the Red Cloud Opera House Gallery. The reception is free and open to the public. Many of Mead's pieces will be for sale, which supports the artist directly, as well as supporting our mission to preserve Willa Cather's legacy through preservation, education, and the arts.

If you're interested in learning how to create botanical prints yourself, Laura Mead will lead a workshop October 18, 2025, from 9:00 a.m.–2 p.m. Registration will open in June.