Big Give Gage – Cortland Museum

Come to the Cortland Museum from 11:00 am – 1:00 pm to donate in person OR https://www.biggivegage.org/organization/CortlandMuseum to donate online.

The mission of the Cortland Museum is to preserve the history of the Village of Cortland, Nebraska and the surrounding area. The museum is dedicated to collecting, exhibiting and maintaining the museum while being a valuable educational resource to our community.

To save the Cortland Museum and contents from auction, a small group of citizens began to raise money and took out a loan to buy the museum in December of 2022. After months of cleaning and repairing the inside and outside of the museum, a grand opening was held in October of 2023. Since then, the Cortland Museum Board has restored the original kitchen for an exhibit room and opened a Research/Library room for the public.

In 2024 and 2025 we raised money for siding and in February of 2026, the new siding was completed. In April of 2026 we were a tour stop on the Nebraska Museum Association Annual Conference.

For our 2026 Big Give Gage Project, the Cortland Museum is starting a multi-year project to expand the museum with a building addition. We are planning to build a building to showcase the agriculture, railroad, automotive and addition of electricity to Cortland and the surrounding community.

We have many items that we cannot display because of the lack of space we have, including a Sandwich Corn Sheller and a homemade tractor.