The Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center is hosting their monthly Museum After Dark event on Friday, January 21 from 7-9 pm. The event will include a special behind-the-scenes tours with Museum Director Jake Krumwiede and Archivist Aaron Preston, who will give a special guided tours through the Heritage Center’s collection to showcase many never-before-seen artifacts and manuscripts.
The event will also showcase the new exhibit opening that night, “All Aboard: Examining the Orphan Trains.” Curator of Collections Amy Johnson will be on hand to talk about the making of the exhibit. The exhibit explores the history of orphan trains that brought orphaned children from the over-populated cities in the eastern United States, out to northwestern Oklahoma, across the Great Plains and beyond, during the latter half of the nineteenth century.
As a part of the special exhibit opening, there will be a special live performance and presentation by Phil Lancaster and Alison Moore. The one-hour multimedia program combines live music, a video montage with archival photographs and interviews of survivors, and a dramatic reading of the 2012 novel “Riders on the Orphan Train” by award-winning author Alison Moore. The program, supported by Oklahoma Humanities, is the official outreach program of the National Orphan Train Complex Museum and Research Center based in Concordia, KS. Their mission is to raise awareness and preserve stories about the orphan train movement.
