Donations to the museum

Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Gazette

McCook rancher Tom Kiplinger chuckles over the mannequin that wears his grandfather Jacob Bauer’s horsehide coat on display now at the High Plains Museum in McCook. McCook Beauty Academy students Dani Johnson and Shaylee Dorn recently “aged” the mannequin with a real hair beard and mustache to make him more believable as an 1800’s-era prairie hunter-trapper dressed to brave Nebraska winters. (He still needs era-appropriate pants and boots). Tom donated other family artifacts, including his grandfather’s shotgun; a wagon wheel coffee table fashioned by his friend, Bob Hedges; an oxen yoke purchased by McCook auctioneer Harry Eiler and presented to Tom; and a spinning wheel brought from Ireland by Tom’s great-grandmother on the Kiplinger side of the family. A ceramic sculpture of a cowboy buckling his chaps that Tom also donated was created by Trudy Nelson, above.