REPLICA OF A PIONEER TOWN IN REMOTE NW NEBRASKA

In the summer of 2015, I spent five days exploring the extreme NW corner of Nebraska, where it adjoins Wyoming and South Dakota's Black Hills . The terrain was extremely rugged, nothing like the stereotypes of Nebraska's lush farmlands. Ranchers like the man pictured ran cattle over the irregular lands, and some began to offer visitors a place to stay or visit or dine.

To get to this chopped up, scenic land, a driver leaves a paved road far behind for a graveled road that goes across a very wide wash (river bed) that is the geologic remnant of a vast primitive waterway. In its turbulent periods the river currents and erosion left tufts of land that vary from a conference table size to a lawn-sized little mesa. The mostly vertical sides of such little pieces of land resemble the toadstools of elsewhere in the area.

This is the High Plains Homestead, a small but excellent restaurant, a very western cocktail lounge and limited overnight rooms, all in a complex like a western village.Quite charming. A visiting geology professor says the landscape and rocks of the area resulted from the creation and subsequent erosion of the Rocky Mountains to the west.

I am told that other scattered ranchers of the area also are catering to tourists, too, in differing ways. Guess you and we will have to do more exploring in this unusual part of the West.

TOADSTOOL PARK IN NEBRASKA

Before setting off on the hike, visitors have a picnic and stoke up on water.

August 11, 2015

This astonishing country in Northwest Nebraska continues to fascinate me, as it is more like New Mexico than the image of a green farming state that most have. From my last blog at Hudson-Meng, it is only a three-mile scenic hike to Toadstool Park.

After arrival and a visit to the restroom, grab a sandwich and water from one's pack (nothing but the restrooms exist there), and enter the park to walk a one-mile, interpretive trail to see the weird formations. Big slabs of rock like giant skipping stones are balanced on fragile-looking supports. Some are stacked like M&Ms Others lie at such an angle that they appear to be about to slide off into a canyon.

Basically, the rough country was slashed open by a huge flood or prehistoric river. It  became covered with volcanic red dust blown all the way from the Oregocountry,  then eroded by wind and rain into today's bizarre shapes. Fossils are often visible, but visitors are forbidden to remove them.

ARCHAEOLOGIST'S DREAM

Northwestern Nebraska is totally different from the expected scenery of rolling green hills and farms with few trees, as I have said in previous blogs. In the extreme northwest corner between Wyoming and South Dakota craggy buttes rise up and continue into (or from) the Black Hills of South Dakota. A true badlands exists.

Depicted here is a display within Hudson-Meng Research Center northwest of Crawford and Highway 20. In the area only a few years ago, an unbelievable bed of bison bones was found under the greenery of Oglala National Grassland that is one of the most important discoveries of archaeology and paleontology in the entire United States, The bones of at least 600 bison of a different type from the current bison that you might see at Yellowstone Park are 10,000 year old remains, making the site the largest  extinct bonebed in the world.  A sample was gathered to place inside the research center for the public to see. Bones of a very few other creatures were mixed into the site, and -- of all things - an ancient knife.

The bones were excavated during 1971-77 by students from nearby Chadron State College. The research center  is tiny and remote, situated along a pleasant, running stream bed, a building about the size of a two-bedroom house.  You may be sure the studies will reveal more about the ancient hunters.

Fossils and odd rock formations at Toadstool Geologic Park are a day's hike distant, although both areas are accessible from gravel roads. Food and lodgings are several miles from either location.  Read the next edition of this adventure in about a week.