New Group Founded To Restore Abbie Gardner Cabin & Museum
New Group Founded To Restore Abbie Gardner Cabin & Museum
March 01, 2022Steve Schwaller
(Arnolds Park)– A new organization has been formed with the goal of raising funds to restore the Abbie Gardner Cabin and Museum in Arnolds Park. Anita Bomgaars is President of the Friends of the Abbie Gardner Cabin. She and a group of friends and neighbors came up with the idea and have been in contact with the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, who manages the site which is owned by the state of Iowa…
“Basically they said to us bring us a friends group or something that’s legalized and legitimate and let’s see if we can’t work together. So the process began in full about a year ago and our executive committee has been busy at work just walking through all the legalities of it, and we are at the point now where on March 8th, which is the 165th anniversary of the Spirit Lake Massacre, we will be formerly launching our friends group and hopefully in June we’ll do a hard launch in which we actually involve members in the community. We are hoping to see a preservationist architect come in and do a site analysis very soon, we’ve worked on that for six months. The state archaeologist, a professor from the University of Iowa, is going to be starting a dig on site this summer. So things are moving and we’re excited to see this story which has so much pertinent historic relevance even for today once again get examined.”
Bomgaars says it’s vital the historic site be maintained for future generations…
“The cabin is on the National Historic Register and not only was it the site of Abbie’s family, but also it was the first wooden school house and I think also the first church in Dickinson county. So we are limited by the criteria on the National Historic Register what we can do, but we hope to raise funds to make that happen. Then, I think it was the early ’70’s was the last time something was actually done to it, and the time is really perfect for us to also look into a new interpretive center. That’s a little bit of a reach, but we think the story warrants it. We want to tell the story of the native Americans in Iowa how, what happened to them, in the years preceding the Spirit Lake Massacre.”
Bomgaars says they’ll be kicking things off with a special event next month featuring Ed Purdy, the docent of the Abbie Gardner Cabin, and Mary Dreyer, Curator of the Dickinson County Museum…
“Mary went into the basement of the Dickinson County Museum and started uncovering all of these wonderful things that Abbie had actually donated to the museum in her lifetime. And there in a dark corner were some glass slides from the early 1900’s that Abbie had used when she did presentations about her story. And Mary took those to Ames and got them digitized. She and Ed will be doing a presentation on April 21st.”
Additional details on that will be released as the event gets closer.
More information on Friends of the Abbie Gardner Cabin can be found at AbbieCabin.com as well as on Facebook.
