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LINCOLN – As a kid, our grade school class was one of many that got to visit John Brown’s Cave in Nebraska City.
There was a cool log cabin, the Mayhew Cabin, hewn from local cottonwoods before Nebraska became a state.
There was this kinda spooky, underground “cave” -- a hand-made tunnel to a nearby ravine that was billed as a hiding spot for slaves escaping bondage in nearby slave states (but was really an effort to increase tourism and the tunnel was never used by escaping slaves).
Back then, John Brown’s Cave was one of the Missouri River city’s top tourist attractions, along with Arbor Lodge.
Now the cabin and the cave are closed up, victims of calamities and a lack of funds while Nebraska City has become a museum mecca. It now has eight museums focusing on all kinds of local history, from windmills to firefighters, Lewis & Clark to the Civil War.
The focus of John Brown’s Cave has shifted over the years to the authentically historic Mayhew Cabin, which historians believe sheltered up to 14 escaping slaves overnight. They were brought there by John Kagi, a top deputy of the famed abolitionist John Brown and a brother of Barbara Mayhew, whose family lived in the cabin.
But fallen tree branches and floods from a nearby ravine in 2013 and 2019 have taken their toll. A museum building that focused on Underground Railroad history smells of mold and sewer backups.
Its foundation is sinking.
The Foundation that owned the site, which had drawn tourists since the 1930s, didn’t have the money, or the insurance, to make repairs. So a “closed” sign went up in 2019. Only a “miracle,” the Foundation stated, could reopen the complex.
A bitter spat followed, with the Foundation blaming the city for failing to maintain a drainage way around the historic Mayhew Cabin and a “historic village” cluster of old buildings; the city claimed it was the foundation’s fault for not keeping a drainage pipe clear of debris.
Three lawsuits followed, and the feud culminated with the Foundation posting a sign outside its then-closed museum stating that the city “killed” the attraction. A glimmer of hope came after the State Legislature, led by then State Sen. Justin Wayne, launched an effort to get the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission to take over the site, the first location in the state named to a national “Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.”
But that hope was pretty well crushed with the release of a recent assessment that put the cost of restoring the structures at an unaffordable cost of $20 million.
It’s an awful shame on several levels. The story of the Mayhew Cabin is part of an important chapter in Nebraska history. Some brave settlers in Nebraska City and Falls City helped “freedom seekers” escape enslavement during the late 1850s and into the Civil War.
Abolitionists also flowed southward through southeast Nebraska – avoiding Missouri, a slave state and diverting through Iowa, a free state – to join the “Bleeding Kansas” fight over slavery.
Former Omaha World-Herald colleague and columnist Robert Nelson has written some excellent articles about the role his hometown, Falls City, played in equipping abolitionists heading south and helping escaped slaves heading north. A site in Falls City is now part of the national freedom trail and a museum is in the works.
Nebraska History, the always informative journal of the State Historical Society, featured a fascinating tale by writer Gail Shaffer Blankenau about the harrowing escape in 1858 of two female slaves, Celia and Eliza Grayson, from servitude.
The history of Mayhew Cabin and its role in the Underground Railroad needs to be told and the Nebraska City site, in some form, needs to be restored and reopened.
I’ve done more than one story on this sad saga and always walk away scratching my head.
Now is the time for these spatting parties to drop their differences and starting working together to restore the historic cabin and revive the important story it tells.
Paul Hammel has covered the Nebraska state government and the state for decades. He retired in 2024 as senior contributor with the Nebraska Examiner.
