Built in 1911, the Lodgepole Opera House in Lodgepole, NE was constructed as a garage on the first level and an opera house on the upper floor. Sitting along the route of the Lincoln Highway, it was built at a time when opera houses were springing up across Nebraska, their popularity a result of rural farm towns wanting to appear more cultured. Despite the name, most of these opera houses showed little in the way of opera and more of the popular plays and music of the time. Later converted into a movie theater, the Lodgepole Opera House last played a film in 1933. Clearly used until sometime later based on the design of the gas pumps sitting out front, it has been abandoned for quite some time and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.