The nice lady in the visitor center of the Mayhew Cabin & Historic Village cracked my soul a little bit when she confirmed that this famous Underground Railroad stop‘s cave associated with the Mayhew Cabin was not the original structure built before the Civil War era. The current underground cave was constructed by Edward Bartling lined with the original foundation stones around 1938. Bartling relocated the cabin to save it from the new highway construction and the property was later sold to the George Rowe family in 1959. Larry Shepard then owned the site and donated it to the Mayhew Cabin Foundation in 2001. In 2005, the Foundation moved to restore the site with the help of the National Park Service and the Nelson Family Foundation. The visitor center is currently being renovated with the grand-opening set for the end of May, 2010.

The Mayhew Cabin, the only official National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom site recognized by the National Park Service in the state of Nebraska, was built by Allen and Barbara Mayhew in Nebraska City in 1855. After meeting with Abolitionist John Brown, John Henry Kagi, Allen’s brother-in-law, established an Underground Railroad stop underneath the Mayhew cabin to provide a safe haven for enslaved people who crossed the Missouri River from Missouri, then a slave state, into Nebraska.