Seniors Find Where Kool-Aid Was Created

Seniors learn of Hastings, Nebraska, known as the city where Kool-Aid was invented by Edwin Perkins in 1927 and celebrates that event with the Kool-Aid Days every August.

Hastings is also known for Fisher Fountain, a “sign of hope” for local and area citizens during the Depression and dust bowl days of the 1930′s. During World War II, Hastings was the location of the largest Naval Ammunition Depot in the United States.

Hastings, the seat of Adams County, with a population of around 25,000, is 136 miles west of Omaha. The community was founded in 1872 at the intersection of the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad and the St. Joseph and Denver City Railroad.   The city was named after Colonel Thomas D. Hastings , who was instrumental in building the railroad through Adams County.

 Seniors Enjoy Hearing Hastings History

The area was previously open plain: the Donner party passed through on its way to California in 1846 and a pioneer cemetery marker in Hastings bears an inscription taken from Tamsen Donner’s journal: “The country between the Blue and the Platte is beautiful beyond compare. Never have I seen so varied a country so suitable to cultivation.”

In the 1870s, railroads lured European immigrants to the new state of Nebraska with advertisements. Hastings’ first settlers were English, from Liverpool, and were quickly joined by other English, Irish, Germans, Danes, and Germans from Russia. Today their descendants are the residents of Hastings.

Senior music lovers will appreciate the Hastings Symphony, greater Nebraska’s premiere symphony orchestra, the Listening Room at the Lark, a nationally-known venue showcasing both local talent and the country’s best musicians and songwriters, and rich, cultural offerings available at Hastings College that was established in 1882 and Central Community College.

 Seniors Find A Great Museum

I’d want to visit the Hastings Museum, the largest municipal museum between Chicago and Denver that chronicles the history of the early inhabitants of the Nebraska plains, from paleo-Indians to euro-Americans.

Senior visitors can experience life up close in the Hastings Museum’s three floors of natural and cultural history as well as full dome astronomy shows in the Planetarium.

In addition visitors enjoy the Museum of Nebraska Art, the Windmill State Recreation Area, the Trails and Rails Museum, the Plainsman Agricultural Museum and the Crystal Lake State Recreation Area.

Lake Hastings features four miles of paved and gravel trails that wind through open fields, woodlands of stately trees, and wetlands. The trails are open to bicycling, hiking, cross-country skiing, and in-line skating on the paved trail.

TripAdvisor notes eleven things to see and do that senior visitors will not want to overlook. So point your route to Hastings and enjoy all it has to offer. -jeb