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Site Name Bushwhacker Museum
Street Address 212 West Walnut
City / State / Zip Nevada MO, 64772
Phone number 417-667-9602
Web Page www.bushwhacker.org
 
Admission Fee $5.00 - Adults, $2.00 - Students 12-18 yrs $1.00 - Children under 12 yrs
Hours 10:00 to 4:00 Tuesday through Saturday, May 1 through October 31, Tours and programs by request year round
Visitor services ADA accessible Rest rooms Gift Shop Research Archives We also do research for a fee
Regular Events Quarterly Programs 2nd Sun. of Jan. April, July, and Oct. Bushwhacker Days Festival 2nd week-end in June
   
Directions From Hwy 71 take the Hwy 54 Camp Clark exit heading west. Turn north on Ash Street, 2 blocks to parking lot on corner of Ash and Walnut Streets.
 
Site photo
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Site Description
Bushwhacker Museum Since 1998 the Bushwhacker Museum has occupied the 13,000 -square-foot lower level of the Finis M. Moss Building, built by the Moss family in 1920 as Nevada's first Ford agency. Featured are exhibits on the Border and Civil War period, as well as other areas of regional and local interest. Bushwhacker Jail "Probably the oldest building in Nevada," according to the National Register of Historic Places citation, the former Vernon County Jail was in use exactly 100 years, 1860-1960. Of the May 24, 1863, skirmish between Bushwhackers and Federal Militiamen, guerrilla leader Captain William Marchbanks wrote, "near where the old jail stood, we overtook them." According to local legend, the militiamen took shelter in the building and fought from it, but evidence is lacking. In the burning of the town by the militia two days later, the jail was one of only two public buildings not destroyed, but was apparently damaged, as the first postwar county court action was to order a new roof for the jail. In 1964 the sandstone building, notable for its Federal architectural style, became the Bushwhacker Museum. After the Museum expanded into new quarters in 1998 the old building was restored as a 19th-century jail and jailer's home and renamed "Bushwhacker Jail". On the Jails's front lawn stands a large monument to the Battle of Drywood (Sep. 2, 1861), one of a series of monuments commemorating action of the (pro-Confederate) Missouri State Guard, erected in 2001 by the Missouri Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

 

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