By TIM UNRUH

Salina Journal

BELLEVILLE -- A touch of Republic County's past went for a short, slow ride Wednesday.

A unique round smokehouse, made mostly of limestone and mortar -- except for the wooden door and frame -- is destined for permanent display at the Republic County Historical Society Museum grounds in Belleville.

Madaline Miller, of Fort Collins, Colo., gave the 120-year-old structure to the museum.

"They just wanted to get it to where it would be preserved and not fall down," said Sherrie Larson, the museum's director and curator.

In an operation that was two years in the making, the smokehouse was moved nearly 15 miles to Belleville from Miller's childhood home four miles southeast of Courtland.

Miller, who is 90, told Larson she played in the smokehouse as a child.

Ball & Son, a house-moving company from Belleville, first placed the structure on a concrete pad and then loaded it, pad and all, onto a trailer.

Phase one of the move, getting the smokehouse and trailer to Belleville, took 2Ôªø1âÑ2 hours to complete. Next week, it will be off-loaded to its permanent home on the museum grounds, joining a church, one-room school, log cabin, blacksmith shop and the Ag Building, where antique farm equipment is stored and displayed.

"I think it will be great. It will add to the settlement scene," said Vickie Kolars, assistant museum director.

The museum is visited by up to 3,000 people a year.

Larson said the move cost $7,500.

Structures like the smokehouse provide a vital glimpse of the past, she said, and are among the artifacts that should be preserved as a way of teaching our history.

"The settlers took a huge risk when they came west to settle the land, and many of their ways of life have been replaced with technology," she said. "This is our way of helping to preserve what life was like when life was a lot simpler."

n Reporter Tim Unruh can be reached at 822-1419 or by e-mail at tunruh@salina.com.

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