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Museum and Village Barton County Historical Society
Shaping the future by teaching the past
T
he Barton County Historical Society Museum and Village is located on five acres just south of Great Bend on U.S. 281 and includes several buildings filled with artifacts and documents that tell the story of Barton County. The narrative runs from the pre-Columbian era when Native Americans hunted at Cheyenne Bottoms to the history of the Santa Fe Trail and later the railroads. It continues through two World Wars and beyond, to recent history. Local historian Karen P. Neuforth, who had served as executive co-director of the museum with Leslie Helsel since 2019, died in March of 2021. Karen dedicated her
life to community service and historical research. She was the museum’s research director from 1986 to 2019. A new executive director, Richard Lartz II, was selected and Helsel became office
manager. Lartz came to the museum from the Santa Fe Trail Center in Larned. The historical society members continue to seek new ways to better tell the history of central Kansas, and as it turns out, that history is still used to potentially shape the present and the future in a time of crisis. As Great Bend Tribune reporter Veronica Coons wrote in March 2020, Hays manufacturer Hess Services Inc. contacted the Museum at the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. The firm sought to use an iron lung on display at the museum to help design a modern version that might potentially be used to help treat COVID-19 patients. “We are very proud here that we could help in only a small way,” Helsel said at the
time. According to an earlier report by Tribune news editor Susan Thacker about the display, the unit was donated to St. Rose Hospital by Aerie No. 646 of the Fraternal Order of Eagles. “By 1986, thanks to widespread use of Dr. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine, its use was no longer vital and it was retired,” Thacker wrote in the report. The village also includes historic buildings such as a church, one-room schoolhouse, post office and railroad depot, along with newer buildings added to house antique farm equipment and other large artifacts. It is just one of many ways the museum hopes to shape the present and future of Barton County by teaching visitors about its past.
