Library

About this property

The Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center is a museum dedicated to the life and works of author Mari Sandoz, and to the High Plains region of the western United States, in which Sandoz grew up, and which was the setting of many of her fictional and non-fictional works. The Center is located on the campus of Chadron State College in Chadron, Nebraska. It occupies the college's former library building, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In 1909, the Nebraska state legislature authorized the construction of a new normal school in what was then the Sixth Congressional District. In the following year, the Nebraska Board of Education chose Chadron as the site for the new school. Classes began in the summer of 1911, with an enrollment of 111 students. In 1921, the legislature passed a bill granting the state normal schools the status of teachers colleges. In 1949, the school officially became the Nebraska State Teachers College at Chadron; in 1963, it was given its current name of Chadron State College. From the founding in 1911 to 1938, seven buildings were constructed on the campus. After that, no new major construction was undertaken until 1953. The first seven buildings were the Administration Building, begun in 1910 and dedicated in 1911; a women's dormitory, now Sparks Hall, built in 1914; the gymnasium, now Miller Hall, built in 1920; the "training school", now the Hildreth Education Building, built in 1926; a library, built in 1929; a new women's dormitory, Women's Hall, now Edna Work Hall, built in 1932; and Crites Hall, built in 1938. The 1929 library served as such until 1967, when the new Reta King library was opened. The old library building then became the Media Center, housing the campus print shop and educational television studio. In 1983, five of the original seven buildings on campus, including the 1929 library, were named to the National Register of Historic Places under the collective designation "Chadron State College Historic Buildings TR". The other two, Administration and Hildreth, had been too much altered for inclusion in the Register. The nomination was principally due to the college's status as the primary educational institution in western Nebraska. Mari Sandoz (1896–1966) was born and grew up in Sheridan County in the Nebraska Sandhills. In 1935, she published Old Jules, a biography of her homesteader father Jules Sandoz. Most of her subsequent works of fiction and nonfiction dealt with the history of the High Plains and its Native Americans, explorers, and settlers. Shortly before her death, Sandoz gave much of her writing material to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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