NEBRASKA THE GATEWAY TO THE COLUMBIA RIVER

Endless, almost electric green acres rolled on to the horizon in north central Nebraska, where fields from South Dakota virtually joined those of its southerly neighbor. It was what I expected. As we drove on west, everything changed. Hills turned into ridges, and the Platte River tributaries laced through the ever more rugged southwest Nebraska lands. Buttes of needle like stature  rivaled my memory of Arizona or New Mexico, leaping from the green earth like aliens seeking to appear from some subterranean city. This was Nebraska???

Nebraska was the center of westward movement toward the mysterious and distant Pacific Ocean. It hosted Texans like those in the popular "Lonesome Dove" who drove half-starved cattle north to Ogallala west of Omaha to ship them east to feeder markets on the only railroad in the Prairies for awhile, or sold them to pioneers sprinkled across adjacent Wyoming, South Dakota, and parts of Colorado.  What was not evident at first was that the road to Oregon's Willamette Valley or eastern Washington grassland lay virtually straight west from this lonely chunk of fertile land -- north central Nebraska.

The route west lay along the large, shallow, and curving North Platte River and its cousin the South Platte. It would lead explorers, fur seekers who eventually got rich if not dead, and bonnet-clad women and children to a hoped-for verdant land. Some 70,000 Mormons passed through on the way to religious freedom in Utah. Hardy gold-seekers turned north to the Dakotas to look for gold. They passed familiar landmarks that still loom today, such as the Courthouse and Jail Rocks, Chimney  Rock and Scott's Bluff on what became known as the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail, the Oregon-California cutoff, and became cursed, as well, by thirsty and hungry pilgrims.

I had the privilege of tracing the unusual charms and challenges of this unusual Nebraska just recently. I will bring you along in subsequent posts and pictures. Above is a pony express rider at Sidney, Alaska, where the 150th birthday of the colorful group was celebrated in 2010. Get your horse or your Conestoga in your mind and follow me. Yee Haw! JoAnn Roe, author of The Columbia River (Caxton Press, 2013)