Prairie Trails Museum and the Jesse James Robbery

On July 21, 1873, the James-Younger gang loosened a rail on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific line near Adair, west of Corydon, and derailed a passenger train. The engineer was killed in the wreck, and the outlaws took what they could from the express car and the passengers. It is widely remembered as the gang's first strike against a moving train, a turn from robbing banks and stagecoaches to the railroads that were opening the plains.

Corydon's own brush with the gang came earlier that spring. On a June day in 1871, Jesse James and his men had robbed the Ocobock Brothers Bank on the Corydon square while much of the town was gathered at a church meeting to hear a visiting speaker. The story goes that the outlaws rode over to the meeting, interrupted the speech to announce that the bank had just been robbed, and rode off laughing before anyone quite understood what had happened. The museum keeps both stories alive, along with the long, mostly fruitless pursuit that followed.

Beyond the outlaw lore, Prairie Trails is first and foremost a museum of ordinary life in southern Iowa. Its galleries hold horse-drawn implements, early automobiles, quilts and textiles, a country schoolroom, a doctor's office, and the recreated storefronts of a small-town main street from the horse-and-buggy years. It is a portrait of how a farming county fed, clothed, taught, and doctored itself before the modern age.

Like many of Iowa's best local museums, it is the work of volunteers and donors who gave their time, their attics, and their family heirlooms so the county's memory would not be lost. That gives the place a personal, homemade warmth, and the guides who staff it can often tell you exactly which family a particular tool or photograph came from.

Corydon has been the seat of Wayne County since the middle of the nineteenth century, and its square still centers on a handsome courthouse surrounded by the low brick storefronts of a classic Iowa county town. Walking the square, it is easy to picture the June morning when the James gang rode in and out before the citizens knew they had been robbed.

The town takes a quiet pride in its outlaw footnote, and the country roads out toward Adair and the old rail line pass through the kind of open, gently folded farmland that has changed less than most places. It is a good base for a slow drive through the small towns of southern Iowa.

Spring and early summer bring green fields and long light to the farm country around Corydon, and the museum's open season is well underway. It is a pleasant time to combine the indoor galleries with a drive out to the old robbery country.

Late summer and fall are harvest season, when the surrounding farmland turns gold and the county fairs and small-town festivals fill the calendar. Winter is quiet and cold, and a museum visit is best planned around its cold-weather hours, which are shorter than in the warm months.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.