Cuba Country School Museum - Cuba, Kansas The Cuba Country School Museum in Cuba, Kansas occupies part of a former one room school house which was moved to downtown Cuba. In addition to the one room country school exhibit there is memorabilia about Cuba and Hillcrest Schools. It is a modest sized museum and visitors without ties to the community will probably need only a short visit, but there is a second museum in the Heritage Center a couple of doors away. and a Historic Blacksmith Shop a little over a block away which make a nice combined visit. The Heritage Center is in the original office of Dr. C.W. McClaskey from 1929 - 1981. The exhibits give an interesting history of Cuba over the years. When we visited the History Center in 2023 there was a nice exhibit of the art of Kansas Photographer Jim Richardson who has been photographing Cuba since 1975. He influenced CBS Sunday Morning to do segments on Cuba twice and his black & white photography of the blacksmith shop was in a 2004 National Geographic article. His photography has appeared in many other National Geographic articles. There was also a interesting exhibit of historic men's gymnastic equipment from Sokol (an athletic cultural and fraternal organization founded in Czechoslovakia during the mid 1800s) and photos of Cuba men performing gymnastics in the 1920s. The Blacksmith Shop dates to 1884, but closed in 1970. It was restored in 2005 by local masons & carpenters and today there is a fully operational shop. Call to tour the shop or learn the times of live demonstrations.
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