Though modern transcontinental travelers tend to
see NEBRASKA in much the same light as did the
early pioneers, heading west during the Gold Rush - as just another
dreary expanse of prairie to get through as fast as possible -
this flat and sparsely populated state in fact encompasses quite
a few places of interest. However, its most appealing cities,
commercial Omaha and the livelier state capital,
Lincoln , are separated by a good three hundred
miles of underwhelming, livestock-rearing flatlands from the western
Panhandle, where the landscape finally erupts into giant sand
hills and valleys, broken by towering rocky columns and hemmed
in by sheer-faced buttes.
Western Nebraska was still embroiled in vicious
and bloody battles against Native Americans long after the east
had been settled; from the first serious uprising in 1854, it
was 36 years before the US Army could make white control unchallengeable.
Close to the South Dakota state line, Fort Robinson
, where Crazy Horse was murdered, remains one of the West's most
evocative historic sites.
Without navigable rivers, Nebraska had to rely on
the railroads to help populate the land. During
the 1870s and 1880s, rail companies, encouraged by grants that
allowed them to accumulate one-sixth of the state, laid down such
a comprehensive network of tracks that virtually every farmer
was within a day's cattle drive of the nearest halt. Thus the
buffalo-hunting country of the Sioux and Pawnee was turned into
high-yield farmland, which today has few rivals in terms of
beef production.
