Durham Museum

The Durham Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, occupies the restored Union Station, a masterpiece of Art Deco railroad architecture completed in 1931 and designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood. The station's great hall features a 115-foot vaulted ceiling, Venetian glass mosaic panels, and Tennessee marble floors, representing one of the finest surviving examples of the streamlined Moderne style in the American Midwest. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and underwent extensive restoration before reopening as a museum in 1975.

The museum's permanent collections interpret the history of the Great Plains and the Missouri River region with particular focus on Omaha and the surrounding prairie landscape. The signature exhibition, From the Ground Up, traces Nebraska and the broader Great Plains from Indigenous habitation through the Missouri River fur trade, the Civil War era, railroad expansion, the sodbusting homesteader period, and into the 20th century. The collection includes Native American cultural artifacts, original Union Pacific Railroad memorabilia, and a substantial archive of regional photographic materials.

A restored Burlington Route streamliner train displayed on the lower level anchors one of the museum's most visited exhibits. Visitors can step aboard the train's original dining car and sleeping car interiors, with furnishings and equipment preserved from the 1940s that illustrate rail travel at its peak mid-century elegance.

The museum also houses a reconstructed early 1900s street-scene exhibit depicting downtown Omaha, featuring original storefronts, a soda fountain, a barbershop, and a general store assembled from period materials. The Archival and Research Library is available to researchers by appointment and holds manuscript collections, photographs, and maps relating to regional history across Nebraska and the Missouri River valley. The first Tuesday of every month offers free general admission.