National Museum of Roller Skating - Lincoln, Nebraska - Roller Skating History Museum

The National Museum of Roller Skating is located at South Street in Lincoln, Nebraska and is approximately two miles from Holmes Park and Lake. The museum collects, preserves, and displays the history of roller skating with informative exhibits. Admission to the museum is free with opening hours from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday but it remains closed at weekends and major holidays.

Visitors here will find the largest collection of historic roller skates in the world, dating as far back as 1819. There is a wide range of roller skating memorabilia at the museum with items such as patents, medals, trophies, photographs, artworks, films and videotapes, costumes, library and archival materials. It also boasts approximately 1,500 volumes of roller skating books and periodicals and over 8,000 photographs.

Various personal papers of individuals featuring prominently in the world of roller skating from 1800 to the present day are held here, as well as programs and archival material for local, regional, national, and international roller skating competitions. Exhibits help to provide the visitor with a greater understanding of roller skating history, giving experiences of things such as the evolution of roller skate wheels. Visitors can also view a selection of nineteenth-century roller skate patents and watch highlights of roller skating competitions.

James L. Plimpton was considered the father of modern roller skating after inventing a skate with four wheels in 1863, and his family collection is one of several collections held at the museum. This includes patent models of early skates by American manufacturers, skates from overseas, competitive and vaudeville costumes, roller skating rinks memorabilia and a number of inventions and experiments relating to the industry. There is a collection of in-line roller skates through the years from 1819, when M. Petitbled patented the first roller skate in Paris, through to the present day.

Other collections featured here include artistic skating, which traces the roots of figure and freestyle skating, along with skate dancing and how it has evolved over the years in to a competitive sport. Visitors can also discover how roller hockey, which started out in London in 1878, has evolved to become one of the fastest growing sports in the world over recent years. The speed skating collection helps provide an understanding of the huge popularity of this professional sport at the start of the 20th century and its subsequent decline, whilst the history of the Roller Derby tracks how the marathon event evolved until it too declined as a result of the Second World War.

The gift shop is located in the exhibit gallery and has souvenirs such as tee-shirts, pens, pencils, patches, postcards and paperweights. Various publications about the history of roller skates can be purchased here too including Skate Crazy, The Evolution of the Roller Skate: 1820-Present and Awards & Honors of the Roller Skating Association International. Visitors can also view items for sale on the museum website, which contains an order form that can be printed and sent in by posted.