The Gale Halderman Mustang Museum is sad to announce the passing of Gale Halderman on April, 29, 2020. He will be sorely missed.

The museum remains open and everyone is welcome to visit by appointment only. Please submit your request by visiting our Contact page.

We hope you enjoy this video of Gale’s final on-camera interview.

About the Barn

The Halderman family farm grew strawberries and other lucrative cash crops. The classic American farm was composed of Gale’s grandparents’ farmhouse. Gale’s parents’ house, the main barn, and greenhouse. His grandfather helped build his own house, and the basement was dug out by hand after the house was built. That is why, even today, the ceiling height is very low; they didn’t want to dig it any deeper than was needed to store canned vegetables with room for a freezer after electricity became available.

Gale’s parents built a house next to his grandparents’ a few years before Gale was born. The two-story homes were similar in style and size. Both were around 1,500 square feet, and both had basements. Gale was an only child and could talk to his grandparents by walking about 100 feet to their house. He could also call them using an old hand-crank telephone that connected the two houses only. When you cranked the phone, the phone at the other end would “ring.”

The main barn was used by the Nursery and included an office area plus a display area. It also had a blacksmith shop complete with a forge that was used to fix farm machinery, and mules were used to pull plows and other heavy loads around the farm.

As Gale’s grandfather used to say, “A dumb mule is smarter than a smart horse.” He believed this because a mule would stop at the end of the row and turn around to start on the next section without being told or motioned to do it.

Al fully functioning greenhouse was a separate building. This greenhouse had a stove for heat as well as a sprinkler system to keep the plants watered.