Nebraska man creates museum for classic car collection

ELM CREEK, Neb. (AP) - There’s a curious old glass structure right off of Interstate 80 near Elm Creek filled with antique cars.

Catch it at the right time of day, and the central Nebraska sun makes the old building beam at passers-by like a nostalgic road sign. Chevyland USA, a classic car museum, is full of auto history, each steel relic telling its own story.

Look closely and you’ll find treasures, such as the green 1965 Chevy Duane Earl Pope used as a getaway car during the Big Springs Massacre, one of the deadliest bank robberies in Nebraska history.

“Back in the ’60s or ’70s, somewhere in there, there was a guy who wrote a book on the 60 years of Chevy,” Monte Hollertz, owner of Chevyland, told the Kearney Hub (https://bit.ly/2sVK5bG ). “One night I was not sleepin’, and I thought, ’Well, if he’s going to write the book, I’m going to start collecting.’”

It can be hard to pinpoint the Pope getaway car among its car brethren - the relic is tucked away safely among a row of Impalas. Monte, who’s been collecting the classic rides since 1976, gives each auto its own dedicated space, telling the story of each old car in an equally unassuming fashion.

“I was farming south of Holdrege, and I started collecting and picking all the sport models. No two-doors or sedans in the bunch,” Monte said.

Over the years, he has traveled well outside of Nebraska on his journey for Chevys, venturing to Oregon and Kansas where he dug up quite a few of his prized possessions. Monte worked with his sons to restore the old beauties, and even found an old skating rink in Minden to house them.

That original version of Chevyland was in Minden for three or four years, Monte said, before he decided the traffic wasn’t what he expected.

Monte did what any industrious farmer would do: He found another piece of land to grow on.

“I thought I’d come up here on the interstate and let it advertise itself,” Monte said. “I started looking and found this place. I drove a ’55 Chevy and parked it in this driveway and kept track of the people who looked at the car that went by on the interstate.”

Satisfied by the number of curious onlookers, Monte headed over to the owner’s house and asked him to sell it, no questions asked.

The new property, right off of I-80 at Elm Creek, wasn’t for sale when Monte found it, but the farmer-turned-car-curator has had to be a salesman to get his hands on some of the more rare automobiles, and quickly convinced the owner to sell him the prime locale.

“I think I paid $30,000 for six acres here,” Monte said.

Finding the new property was the easy part, though, according to Monte and his wife, Jo.

“I didn’t know anything of what I had to do,” Monte said.

“The rules and regulations,” Jo said, laughing.

Monte opted to wing it, purchasing a prefabbed building from Oxford, which he placed on the property with windows facing the interstate. One misplaced sand water pump later, and Chevyland USA was officially in business, this time in Elm Creek. Monte kept up with the farm on a full-time basis, and also worked nonstop to get Chevyland USA to start up.

He didn’t take over as the head curator of Chevyland USA full time until 1980, when he married Jo.

“Monte and I didn’t get married until 1980,” Jo said. “He was still living down on the farm. When we got married, we moved up here and the oldest boy took over the farm.”

“I always liked cars,” Jo said. “I learned to like them more after I got here.”

The building had only a small kitchen and bedroom for the nights when Monte would rather crash among his cars than drive back to Holdrege when the couple moved in, but with nine kids total, the couple needed more room to spread their wings. They built a cozy little home onto the museum, and have spent the years welcoming the curious.

“This has been our home for 37 years,” Jo said.

Jo’s always been a good sport about Monte’s penchant for collecting, although Monte, now 84, says he has “run out of gas” when it comes to digging up cars.

“I always told him other guys took their wives up and down Main Street,” Jo said. “Mine took me up and down the back alleys to look for cars.”

Finding relics takes a lot of research and a lot of investigating, and it’s just not something he’s up to. He’d rather spend his time watching Fox News or Animal Planet.

Monte isn’t sure the exact number of cars in the collection these days - “probably 80-something” - but the collection has long surpassed being Chevy-exclusive. There are a number of Fords, Audis and Mercedes lined up against their Chevy counterparts, and one may even spot the odd Oldsmobile or Cadillac in the bunch, too.

“Out of the 60 years of Chevy, at one time I had 55 of them,” Monte said. “Now I got probably 10 or 15 different brands of cars in there.”

He’s not sure how many Chevys are left back in that collection these days - he’s traded some off for other cars that interested him.

“That’s not up here now,” Monte said, pointing to his head.

Still, it’s apparent that whatever the number, it’s a lot.

Among the collection at Chevyland are several rare cars - including that getaway car, which Pope rented in Salina, Kansas, in June 1965. He drove it to the Farmers State Bank in Big Springs where he shot the bank employees during a robbery. Monte displays the rental agreement and news stories about the crime on the dashboard of the old Chevy.

Most of the cars in Monte’s collection have slightly less morbid histories, though - they’re just cool cars to own, a blast from the auto past.

“The Whippet is a very rare one,” Jo said. There’s a ’32 Chevy Roadster thrown in the collection too, a very rare and very expensive vehicle.

“I like the ’60s,” Jo said. The bigger the body, the better.

At the height of Chevyland’s popularity, the couple clocked about 100 visitors a day to the museum. They installed a notification system in their home to alert them when curious onlookers drove onto the property, but it’s been out of order for a few years. Not that it matters much now - it’s slowed down a lot, his wife said.

The older people who were most interested in the museum really aren’t around anymore, Monte said, and the younger generation doesn’t get wrapped up about old cars as much.

“Now I’m 84 years old and I can’t do things like I used to,” Monte said. His hands and his brain won’t cooperate most days, he said, which makes tinkering with his toys a lot more difficult.

The couple also has a lot bigger of a priority - 19 great-grandchildren to spoil - so the slower life of the museum hasn’t been too hard to get used to. They still welcome visitors to the museum, and Monte still happily conducts the tours, telling visitors about the history of that Chevy getaway car and his other treasures when the odd onlooker stops by.

“We’ve got it made now because it’s kind of peaceful,” Monte said.

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Information from: Kearney Hub, https://www.kearneyhub.com/