One of my favorites of the museum is this Milburn Electric car. Restored by the Lawrence Region Antique Auto Club, this gift was among the first to be made to this museum when it opened in 1976. It belonged to a Mrs. Eleanor Henley. It was a preferred form of transportation in the time before gasoline cars had ignition switches. In those days when you had a gasoline car you had to have a hand crank. The older ladies didn't want to take the risk of a broken wrist or elbow, so they liked a car where you could push a button and get it started. It had a traveling speed of 7 to 25 mph and a range of about 75 miles before the batteries needed to be recharged. An interesting feature that I've always loved is that you drove the car with a tiller (lever) from the back seat. On the rare chance that you would have 4 passengers the driver would have actually had to look around the passengers to drive the car, but that's not likely to have occurred very often.

This car was brought into the museum in 1975 with great care. One of the regrets of the design of our stairwell is that once the car was ramped up into the museum it has had to stay. It would have been nice to have it featured in parades, but there simply is no easy way to remove it from here. There are only 7 Milburn Electrics in the country; in museums in Denver, Des Moines, Lawrence, and the rest are held in private collections.