Bushwhacker Museum

Since 1998 the Bushwhacker Museum has occupied the 13,000-square-foot lower level of the Finis M. Moss Building, built by the Moss family in 1920 as Nevada's first Ford agency. Featured are exhibits on the Border and Civil War period, as well as other areas of regional and local interest. Bushwhacker Jail, "Probably the oldest building in Nevada, " according to the National Register of Historic Places citation, was the former Vernon County Jail in use  for exactly 100 years (1860-1960). Of the May 24, 1863, skirmish between Bushwhackers and Federal Militiamen, guerrilla leader Captain William Marchbanks wrote, "near where the old jail stood, we overtook them." According to local legend, the militiamen took shelter in the building and fought from it, but evidence is lacking. In the burning of the town by the militia two days later, the jail was one of only two public buildings not destroyed, but was apparently damaged, as the first postwar county court action was to order a new roof for the jail. In 1964 the sandstone building, notable for its Federal architectural style, became the Bushwhacker Museum. After the Museum expanded into new quarters in 1998, the old building was restored as a 19th-century jail and jailer's home and renamed "Bushwhacker Jail". On the Jails's front lawn stands a large monument to the Battle of Drywood (Sep. 2, 1861), one of a series of monuments commemorating action of the (pro-Confederate) Missouri State Guard, erected in 2001 by the Missouri Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.