Kalona Historical Village preserves the ordinary

This summer, the Washington County Riverboat Foundation held an emergency meeting to decide if they would grant the Kalona Historical Society funds to transport a barn 20 miles to their historical village located in southeast Iowa.

Historian Michael Zahs couldn’t stand to be in the room when the group was making their decision, and he waited out in the hall after sharing his presentation.

“ [They] came back in 10 minutes and they said, ‘Well, you need to get in touch with your workers,’” Zahs said, tearing up as he told the story. “And gave us $300,000.”

So, what makes this barn so special that it deserves an emergency grant? Nothing in particular. And Zahs said that is the point.

“I think a lot of times when we preserve things for the future, we do not preserve what is normal,” said Zahs, sitting inside a one-room schoolhouse in the Kalona Historical Village. “We preserve the mansions and the eight-sided barns and the round barns. And so are we going to be raising a whole generation of people that think that was normal?"

Saving what is typical

Zahs, a retired history teacher from Washington, was contacted by Matt Greiner, one of his former students, to survey property Greiner had purchased and tell him what should be preserved. Greiner said he would donate the barn, if it could be moved off the property soon.

The building is a more than century old gambrel barn. It will be the first agricultural building on the Kalona Historical Village grounds. Zahs said having it on the property will represent the type of barn many Iowans grew up with.

“Grandparents are going to be bringing their grandkids into this barn and say, ‘Well, this is where we milk the cows, and this is where we had the oats bin’ and that kind of thing, because it's like the barn they had.”

This barn will be the 85th building that Zahs has helped move in the span of his life. Most of those wouldn’t still be standing if they hadn’t been moved. He said if there is a good reason to save something, people should make an effort to do so.

“Barns are being saved, but they're all for people getting married in,” he said. “They're not for milking cows in, you know? They're for getting gifts in. And so, this will be a barn that will look like a barn, and it could function like a barn.”

Small-town Iowa boasts big-city museum

The barn is one of several projects at the Kalona Historical Village with the aim of deepening the understanding of small-town Iowa’s history.

Walking through the site , visitors learn how Mennonite Iowans and Washington County’s earliest residents lived, with structures like an old windmill, the original Richmond post office and a ‘grandpa house,’ where elderly relatives would live on their kin’s property.

In the middle of the village, a train depot is being refreshed. A display inside the depot will explain the railroad's significance to small Iowa towns. The historical society recently acquired a 1920s wooden box car, which will also be a small museum to complement the train depot.

The Wahl Museum, which sits on the property, was recently rebuilt and updated with new exhibits. The museum begins with a history of the land Kalona sits on before the railroad existed, with information about the Meskwaki tribe and the pioneer communities. Then, the exhibit on the railroad transitions visitors into the early days of Kalona as a newly-industrialized town. A streetscape of downtown Kalona as it was in the early 20th century invites visitors to explore the old movie theater, hotel, barber shop and the original Kalona creamery.

“When people walk in here ... they're pretty surprised and shocked as to what this looks like,” said Nancy Roth, managing director of the village. “This isn't a small-town looking museum. This is a big-city looking museum, and that's something that excites us.”

The majority of the pictures and artifacts that make up the Wahl Museum were found in the Kalona Historical Society’s collections, including original 3x5" photos that have been blown up into life-sized wall murals.

“The volunteers that painstakingly did all the research that went into this exhibit – and they did that for several years – I can't praise them enough for what they made this turn into,” Roth said.

For school children visiting the museum, the streetscape makes Kalona’s history interactive and tangible. Iowans with family ties to Kalona may even find a bit of their own history in the museum, like in the alumni room, which is full of high school photos displaying decades of Kalona students.

One exhibit is particularly special to Roth. The general store, which Roth and her family operated for six generations, is brought back to life in the streetscape. Roth began working for the historical society after a fire caused the family to close the store in 2004.

“This room means a lot to me, just because my dad and I were able to help recreate it from his stories and his visions when he was little, growing up in the store, to my stories and my vision of it, so this was fun.”

In addition to managing the ongoing projects, Roth is preparing for the upcoming Kalona Fall Festival , held on the historic village grounds Sept. 27-28. The event features food, entertainment and old-world demonstrations.

A reputation for preservation

Zahs is known for his collections. Whether it’s the buildings he saved, a Guinness-world record accumulation of nativity sets , or the historic Brinton film collection he saved – inspiring a documentary – he’s an Iowa legend when it comes to history.

In a conversation for Talk of Iowa , host Charity Nebbe asked Zahs if putting together exhibits at the Kalona Historical Village was an important part of his legacy.

"I've had people ask what my legacy is, and I never even thought about having one,” he said. “And you know, I grew up in a family that we never talked about our legacy. But what this does, it gives me a place to put things that can be important to other people too. And so, if that's my legacy, it is.”

To listen to this and other Iowa cultural conversations, listen to Talk of Iowa , hosted by Charity Nebbe . Samantha McIntosh produced this episode.