Harold Warp Pioneer Village showcases vintage planes and pioneers

I’ve known about Harold Warp’s Pioneer Village museum in Minden, Nebraska, since I was an eager-beaver teenager researching Curtiss Pusher biplanes for the Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation.

Harold Warp snagged himself a genuine, if rebuilt-a-bit, Curtiss that hangs in the brick museum building he built in his home town in 1953.

That’s not nearly all that Warp gathered.

It’s still startling to see his Bell P-59 Airacomet fighter — the first American jet, and one of only six still in existence.

Come with me for a trip to Pioneer Village. We’ll explore a heavy dose of aviation within these walls, but we can’t overlook the crazy (in the most affectionate sense of the word) breadth and depth of his collection of all things American and mechanical.

Warp, an orphan who left town and created a plastics company that boosted his fortunes beyond what he might have expected to achieve in Minden, never forgot his roots. He was born in 1903 in a sod house. By 1948, he learned the schoolhouse of his childhood was to be sold by Minden, and he bought it to preserve it. Soon more buildings became available, and the seeds of Pioneer Village were planted.

Warp set a goal of preserving the mechanical and cultural history of a growing and evolving America, spanning the time period from 1830-1960. A Piper Apache and an Ercoupe in the museum, both bearing the Warp’s Plastics company logo, give a clue about his aviation disposition.

And that accounts for one of Pioneer Village’s crown jewels, the 1910 Curtiss Pusher hanging in the first gallery of the museum near the entrance. Flown by early aviator C.K. Hamilton in June 1910 on the first round-trip flight from New York to Philadelphia, this Curtiss slumbered in a Connecticut barn for many years before Harold bought it in 1954.

This silver-doped Curtiss gives the impression it has not been touched, save for an occasional dust mop, since 1954.

And that speaks volumes about the caught-in-amber, trapped-in-time, ambience of Pioneer Village. The antiquity of the artifacts is fascinating and informative. Being in the presence of these time-machine icons can be as evocative as the best state-of-the-art museum restoration. You can feel the gentle presence of Charlie Hamilton and Harold Warp as you quietly study the biplane that one of them flew and the other one saved.

And nearby, closer than the distance you could fling a buffalo chip on the pioneer trail west, the Warp museum showcases an original Conestoga wagon in all its swaybacked glory. This is another find that Harold made back in the day, pulling it from a barn after 90 years of quiet hibernation.

Inside the Conestoga, a wooden bucket hanging from a hickory bow that supports the canvas tells a story of pioneer cleverness. The imperfect trail west jostled the contents and occupants of the Conestogas, and pioneer travelers learned a bucket of cream could churn its own butter as the wagon train labored on its way. Harold Warp enjoyed imparting historical tidbits like this within his museum’s displays.

And that’s how an hour becomes two hours, then four, in the quiet buildings on Pioneer Village’s sleepy Nebraska campus. Put away your cell phone (unless it is your camera), and revel in being enough miles from the interstate that you can’t feel the freeway’s mind-numbing roar. Minden, and Pioneer Village, are substantially unchanged over the last half century.

If you’re old enough, you can relive your youth among the rows of vintage vehicles, tools, and doodads that made America grow. Too young to recall any of the displays from memory? Then let your imagination wander, and recall stories from family members who did share the window of time captured in the collections.

If the Curtiss Pusher holds court with other aircraft soaring above wagons in the first Harold Warp gallery, wandering into the second room causes a stunning sensation of discovery as a Curtiss JN-4 Jenny biplane gives a counterpoint to a rakishly mounted Bell P-59 Airacomet jet fighter, looking like it just retired from World War II training and test use.

Fabric on the Jenny’s fuselage sags a bit, after probably 70 years of hanging over Warp’s fantastic collection of aircraft engines.

To be sure, there’s amazing artistry and professionalism in the fabulous aircraft restorations we celebrate at other places like Oshkosh every year. But the quiet, aged equilibrium of the Warp collection offers a contemplative counterpoint seldom available to us.

Other buildings surround a quiet grassy centerpiece, each structure holding everything from classic cars to tractors and farm implements that bear calm witness to the labors and inventiveness of those who preceded us.

A relocated Pony Express station and a 19th Century land office share turf with a rural train depot beside a vintage steam locomotive. And it’s all so seductively quiet, punctuated only occasionally when a visitor rings the locomotive’s brass bell.

As if the lure, and lore, of aviation artifacts weren’t enough to get you inside Harold Warp’s Pioneer Village, rows of vintage automobiles, farm tractors, and early earth moving machines speak to another aspect of American growth in the 19th and 20th centuries.

I felt like a kid again, discovering something new to me around every bend, and reconnecting to my youthful curiosity and sense of awe that banishes clock-watching and encourages relaxation.

If Harold Warp was a visionary in plastics, he leveraged that farsightedness when he began collecting Americana long before many others thought to do so. Harold Warp died in 1994, leaving his remarkable museum legacy to continue.

Yes, some of the fabric-covered aircraft are showing inevitable signs of age as the ancient cloth sags and tears. But museums like Pioneer Village, supported by a non-profit foundation, must prioritize their precious budget dollars. Museum director William Ascarza says things like roof repairs — the first line of defense to protect all that resides within — must come first, along with lighting upgrades, marketing, and campground expansion to bring in more money to continue the work.

So the aged aircraft, silently evocative, will stay that way for now. Wandering among them is a quiet and rare experience.

For more information: PioneerVillage.com