Clockwise from top left are Aaron Duree, Lurena Moorman, Matt Moorman,
Charley Neal, Kamille Cole, Ali Rice, Alyssa McClellan and Lee Fernandez.

All is quiet on Main Street at Old Town Museum in Burlington, but not for long. A narrator forewarns onlookers, his deep baritone booming from overhead speakers:

“Out on the cattle trail, men went for weeks or months without seeing civilization, and once they hit town, well, a celebration was in order. A full wallet fueled a spending binge … but most cowboys stayed inside the law when they painted the town.”

However, the narrator intones, sometimes things got “a little too wild, and the marshal and his men had to step in ... So sit back, relax, enjoy the show, because it’s about to get Western.”

Two rowdy young cowboys burst out of the 19th century tavern, arguing loudly over a task for their trail boss. Charley complains like a whiny little brother when the older McClane sends him away to sell cattle.

Like all good Westerns, the plot thickens, and young Charley finds himself engaged in a tense, gunslinging showdown with the marshal. Spoiler alert: There’s collateral damage, but a good guy and gal win.


Cowboys Charley Neal and Matt Moorman start a ruckus in the town streets.

On Saturdays in June, July and August, visitors to Old Town Museum, within view of Interstate 70 not far from the Kansas state line, can watch the gunfight performed twice daily. The black-powder blanks give off loud reports and send up plumes of white smoke that seem very realistic, but the scuffle is entirely fictional and completely safe. After the melee, the actors pose for pictures and hand out souvenir autograph cards to young and old alike, bringing the nostalgia of the Old West to life.

Aaron Duree leads the gunfighter cast. Depending on the needs of the day, he will play either a hero or a villain, but either way, he warmly greets the audience afterward. Along with Old Town Museum Director Nikki Wall, Duree helped create the gunfight program, even writing the script for the eight-minute drama.

Duree was one of the original cast six years ago who responded an ad in the local paper, The Burlington Record, recruiting “gunfighters and dancing girls.” The dancing girls are for Old Town’s can-can shows and monthly Wild West Dinner Theater, which showcases high-kicking, comedienne can-can girls who also sling bottles of sarsaparilla and cowboy cream soda.

Matt and Lurena Moorman have also been with the cast since day one. In fact, they met while working together at Old Town and are now married with a child. Lurena heads up the cast of can-can dancers, choosing the script, selecting songs and choreographing dance routines that will be performed in Old Town’s Longhorn Saloon.

Old Town hires local high school students and kids home from college. Most of the dancers studied theater in school, performing in plays. They play parts in Old Town that come right out of a classic Western, with good humor, agility and quick tongues.

Many can-can dancers start as freshmen in high school and come back every summer through college. Lee Fernandez started as a 14-year-old and is graduating this year. Alyssa McClellan will be home from her freshman year of college to be in the shows all summer.

The gunfights and can-can shows take place in a setting that seems to transport visitors to the past. All 21 of Old Town’s buildings are authentically restored historic structures, most of which were moved here from elsewhere in eastern Colorado. For instance, the 1890 jail where Charley and McClane spend time in the daily gunfight routine originated in Kit Carson County, then moved to Stratton, 19 miles east, and arrived in Old Town in 1986, when the museum first opened.

The church on the museum grounds was relocated from Armel, what was once a thriving prairie town with a post office 42 miles north. The Boese house, built in 1915 south of Vona, 27 miles east, displays its original wallpaper and curtains upstairs.

Rock Island Railroad built the train depot, the oldest building at Old Town, in 1889 in Bethune, where it remained in operation through half of the 1940s. The H.H. Ernest family donated it to the museum. Inside is an original blueprint of the depot, several pieces of track and an original pot-belly stove.

The 1911 Harmony School House moved to Old Town from the town of Cope in School District 54. The desk inside the school is dated 1889, based on a repair ticket for $1.95.

No period museum is complete without a red barn. With its 40-foot-high ceiling, the one at Old Town in a beautiful specimen. Built in 1930 in Kanorado, Kansas, right along the Colorado state line, it took 15 days of planning and two days to move the massive barn to Old Town. It now hosts weddings, meetings and other special events.

The museum building, which was constructed to house several thousand donated artifacts, is home to the nation’s third-largest collection of barbed wire; visitors can imagine the race that ranchers ran to put up their specific barbed wire, as distinctive as a cattle brand, to secure their land.

Next to the barbed wire, the curves of vintage vehicles – mainly cars and tractors – tell the story of bygone craftsmanship. Visitors can imagine them on the streets of Burlington and back roads of Kit Carson County when gasoline was 4 cents a gallon.

A 1917 Maxwell automobile (Chrysler bought Maxwell in 1925) cost $655 brand new when Martin Driscoll bought one from a dealer in Wild Horse, 75 miles away. When he could no longer drive, his wife, Elsina, would take their grandchildren on good days for ice cream cones. Still operable, it’s sometimes driven in Burlington parades.

The museum pays tribute to Burlington’s most famous son – the late U.S. astronaut Mike Lounge. Born in Burlington, Lounge flew in the space shuttle Discovery in 1985 and again in 1988, the second flight carrying a flag signed by 3,500 well-wishing citizens of Burlington. The flag is on display at the museum. South 18th Street in Burlington, near the museum grounds, is Mike Lounge Drive – a testmaent to just how beloved he was.



Can-can dancers perform in the Longhorn Saloon.

Many of the museum’s buildings are equipped with voice boxes. The push of a button begins a taped, one-minute explanation of the building’s significance.

Nothing on the museum property illustrates the rugged life of the Eastern Plains quite like the authentic sod house on display. Push the button, and the narrator explains why sod houses arose on the Eastern Plains.

The Homestead Act of 1862 offered settlers 160 acres they could call their own if they stuck it out for five years. Sod houses were a quick and economical way to set up a house, the sod placed grass side down to secure the 2-foot-thick walls. Old bed sheets covered the ceiling. Nothing prevented snakes from wiggling their way inside.

Abundant rainfall in the 1880s led farmers to believe that eastern Colorado was a “rain belt.” Against the advice of prairie veterans, they plowed up drought-resistant plants. When drought followed soon after, many newer farmers became destitute and left the area.

Often overlooked in the museum is the salmon-colored wool Pullman train passenger blanket recovered from debris-strewn mud left behind by the Republican River flood that devastated eastern Colorado and western Nebraska in May 1935. Two feet of rain fell on the parched Plains in the middle of the Dust Bowl drought, destroying Rock Island rail lines and bridges, in some places rising 6 feet in 30 minutes. The flood killed an estimated 114 people.

Passenger service to Burlington aboard the railroad began in 1888 and discontinued in 1967.

In his role as catalog librarian for the Burlington Public Library, Old Town gunslinger Aaron Duree dug deep to learn the history behind another overlooked museum item: an unopened 1938 bottle of Dom Benedictine, displayed in the museum’s Honor Hall.

The story behind the bottle involves two men from Burlington, veterans of World War I, who traveled to Paris in 1938 to attend an American Legion convention.

As members of The Last Man’s Club, they agreed to store and secure the bottle until only two members of their club remained. Apparently, the bottle was forgotten.

The bottle came into the possession of a donor who noted that “all of the men are deceased, and there is no one left to drink it. and all members of the club passed away before the beverage could be consumed.” Duree is searching records at the museum for obituaries for members of The Last Man’s Club. He’s found 11 of 46 so far.

When the smoke from Duree’s guns settle, the 6.5-acre Old Town Museum embodies the history of the Eastern Plains by bringing it to life through creatively staged exhibits, song, dance and thoughtful narration. Old Town is a treasure trove of relics waiting to be discovered.