Photo courtesy: (Craig Chandler/University Communication)
As part of some students college experience, those involved in the Tractor Restoration Club at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, its key part to fixing up tractors from their great-grandparents era.
The Tractor Restoration Club was created in 2005 and typically restores two or three tractors a year. Those tractors are then used for either display at the Lester Larsen Tractor Test and Power Museum or sold for the benefit of the museum.
For the 2017-18 school year, the club will prepare a 1945 Allis Chalmers Model C for display at the Homestead National Monument near Beatrice.
Al Levitan, a conservator from West Virginia will be meeting with the member of the club on Oct. 12. Levitan is consulting for the Friends of Homestead, to discuss how to recover and ready the little tractor with a tricycle-style front end for permanent display. This tractor was used to clear land on the last homestead claim in the United States, filed in 1947.
The club typically aims to make their projects run like new and shine like its in tip top shape. With this rusty, lichen-encrusted machine, they hope to stop its deterioration so it can survive as a testament to one homesteaders grit.
Photo Credit:(Craig Chandler/University Communication)
Around 84,000 models were manufactured at the companys Wisconsin plant, so it is not rare, but it has a special story.
This tractor was lifted by helicopter in June from a roadless site in Alaska, the last land in America to be claimed under the federal Homestead Act of 1862. Homesteader Ken Deardorff used it to clear hundreds of tree stumps to farm the land as required by the homesteading law.
The club will have this once-in-a-lifetime chance with this tractor to get a deeper perspective on their restoration efforts.
This tractor will bring the American homesteading story full circle, by bringing an artifact from the last homestead site to the first homestead site. The Homestead National Monument of America is at the site claimed by Daniel Freeman on Jan. 1, 1863.
