My hometown of Red Cloud recently celebrated a massive milestone: after years of dreaming and planning and nailing down the details on the revitalization of a historic building, community members gathered downtown to cut the ribbon on Hotel Garber, a 27-room boutique hotel in the heart of downtown. As I reflected on that shared achievement, I realized we had added another chapter in a new, homegrown Greater Nebraska story.
For far too long, the narrative about rural America has been about its decline. We hear story after story about how there are no jobs, no housing, and little hope. We’ve been told time and time again that you shouldn’t put too many resources into places like Red Cloud because you won’t get a good return on investment. Rural America, the critics say, is slowly dying. Imagine the audacity then, of not only deciding to build a new hotel in a town of about 1,000 people 60 miles from the closest interstate, but also declining the opportunity to build a cheap chain hotel on the edge of town in favor of rehabilitating a dilapidated historic building to the tune of almost $9 million.
Our decision to finally fulfill the long-held dream of creating high quality lodging and dining experiences in Red Cloud to meet the needs of the thousands of Willa Cather fans, Red Cloud High School alumni, outdoor enthusiasts, lovers of history, and everyone else that visits Red Cloud was borne not just out of the desire to tap into an underserved market, but to help make the community of Red Cloud sustainable for years to come.
I’m a proud supporter of Nebraska Community Foundation (NCF) and chair our local NCF affiliated fund in Red Cloud. In the NCF network, we believe wholeheartedly in the idea of asset-based community development. We believe that rural communities can thrive by building upon their existing assets rather than waiting for external forces to align and save our rural places. Here in Red Cloud that means leveraging the unique assets we are blessed to have because of our connection to Willa Cather and the history of the American West. Luckily for us, the Willa Cather Foundation and its supporters created an amazing infrastructure over the last 70 years for us to build upon.
Thanks to those efforts and our continued dedication to make Red Cloud an even greater place to both live in and visit, Red Cloud is becoming a destination tourism location. The Hotel Garber and the sites associated with the National Willa Cather Center are critical linchpins for our efforts. They will help us build out additional retail and recreation options. They have inspired individuals to do their own downtown restoration projects.
Our peers in the Nebraska Community Foundation network are also writing their own narratives and disproving long-held myths. NCF affiliated funds in Boone County and Laurel have both boosted efforts to open quality early childhood education centers in their communities, damaging the myth that there’s little support for young families in rural places. The myth that there’s nothing to do in Greater Nebraska is being challenged by folks in Butler County, where the community celebrated the grand re-opening of the Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art; in McCook, where high schoolers are bringing the dream of a drive-in theater to reality; and in Burwell, where the Calamus Area Community Fund supported a renovation at Nebraska’s Big Rodeo after storms damaged facilities in 2022. And everywhere across this state, adults are inviting young Nebraskans to assume meaningful roles in planning for the future—Diller Community Foundation Fund’s Youth Serviceship Camp, for instance, encourages elementary schoolers to unleash their civic creativity.
Convincing others to invest in rural communities is still a difficult proposition, but we believe this place and its compelling stories are worth saving and celebrating. We know that with great love, our hometowns can thrive.
Jarrod McCartney is the Red Cloud Heritage Tourism Development Director and chair of the Red Cloud Community Fund, an affiliated fund of Nebraska Community Foundation.
