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Imagine that you could be transported in a time machine to Nebraska 12 million years ago. You would walk out of your time machine into a very different world than the one you’re used to.
For one thing, you would be the only human being in the landscape. Humans had not yet evolved, and so animals dominated a landscape covered with sub-tropical grasses and patches of jungle.
The area that became Nebraska ... Read more
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For centuries before 1800, Native tribal groups had inhabited the land of the Great Plains and the West. In that sense, they "owned" it. Between 1650 and 1800, a series of European governments — Spain, Britain, France and Russia — all sent explorers into parts of the West and "claimed" to own the land.
But in 1802, ownership of a large part of the West changed, and changed fundamentally. ... Read more
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The first Europeans to see the West were soldiers, explorers, mountain men, trappers, and traders. At first they followed the rivers and streams into the West, but eventually most realized that rivers couldn’t take you everywhere you wanted to go. And so overland routes were blazed.
Fur traders were among the first white men to follow Indian trails that eventually became a blueprint for parts of the Oregon Trail. They ... Read more
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The first half of the 19th century was a time of great change on the Great Plains. It was only 1803 when President Jefferson completed the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon — a purchase including the Great Plains region. No one knew what was in the purchase besides a lot of land and relatively few Indians. This land was not organized into a territory. In 1854, the federal government passed the ... Read more
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Imagine yourself as a young person in a place where the land has all been taken. You might want to become a farmer, but there is no farmland available. Then imagine seeing advertisements for land, some for very little money, some for free! You face many unknowns. What is this new land really like? Will there be enough rainfall to grow your crops? Will you have neighbors? Who will they be? What about the people who are already on the ... Read more
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Notable Nebraskan, Julius Sterling Morton was born April 22, 1832 in Adams, New York. Morton, along with Robert Furnas, was the co-founder of Arbor Day.
At a young age, Morton knew he loved newspapers and nature. He pursued these passions throughout his life and today is known for both.
After finishing school at the University of Michigan, Morton married ... Read more
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Several events caused an increase in the number of cattle in Nebraska after the Civil War. The destruction of the Plains bison made more room for cattle, and Native Americans needed a new meat source. Meat-processing plants in Chicago and gold miners rushing to the Black Hills needed beef. The enormous growth in the beef industry caused many changes and challenges.
In the 1870s, Americans’ taste for beef became more refined. ... Read more
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By 1925, beef production had been greatly improved. New laws were enforced that reduced ranchers’ illegal use of public land. Stockyards and packing houses began to follow health guidelines and had somewhat improved working conditions for their workers.
In 1926, a new Livestock Exchange Building towered over the South Omaha stockyards. It reflected the strength of the cattle and the livestock industry over nearly a quarter century, and it promoted hope ... Read more
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In 1971, University of Nebraska State Museum paleontologist Michael Voorhies was walking with his wife Jane through a series gullies on Melvin Colson’s farm in northeastern Nebraska. What had attracted Voorhies to this area was that the Verdigre Creek and its tributaries had done a good job of eroding away the top layers of much of the land around the area. Voorhies had been searching the area since 1969 and had found a number of fragmentary fossils.
Eventually, they moved their ... Read more
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Unfortunately, a time machine does not exist that would enable you to take a journey back 12 million years ago. But, the Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park may be the next best thing.
The park is located between Royal and Orchard in Antelope County in northeast Nebraska. Inside, the animals are still locked in their death-poses and are amazingly well preserved skeletons. Michael Voorhies and his colleagues made the decision to excavate the site and leave the animals in their ... Read more
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Find out where these Protohistoric cultures are.
Around 1600 CE, the first of the Protohistoric tribal cultures to return to the Nebraska region may have been the ancestors of the Pawnee. Several archaeological sites around the present day Lower Loup River in east-central Nebraska have been found, and these sites have named for that river basin.
Precise dates are difficult, but one interpretation of Pawnee stories or oral history says that they immigrated into Nebraska from the south about 1600. Archaeologists also ... Read more
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The Pawnee was one of the earliest Native American tribes to be described in the European historical record, and they were one of the largest groups to live and roam across the territory. Their name most likely comes from a Pawnee word for horn which was “Pariki” or “Parrico” and was in reference to the way they fashioned their hair to look to have a horn or horns. The French explorers recorded the term as “Pani” as eastern native groups ... Read more
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Lewis and Clark’s expedition was followed by an expedition led by Zebulon M. Pike in 1806. This expedition was General James Wilkinson’s idea. Wilkinson was a newly appointed governor of the Louisiana Territory. He sent Pike on an expedition towards Spanish territory, possibly to provoke a war or to spy.
The Spanish in the New Mexico territory became very frightened about American plans when Jefferson sent out the Lewis and Clark expedition because Spain still claimed parts of the Louisiana Territory.
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Settlers on the Great Plains had to contend, both physically and psychologically, with what to them was a wilderness. They faced a featureless land that many described as "a sea of grass."
Europeans and Americans brought their own way of thinking about land with them, based on a system of longitude and latitude developed in the 18th century. Property lines were drawn on pieces of paper — maps — dividing one ... Read more
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Getting free land from the government was amazingly simple. The first thing you had to do was fill out an application form that stated several facts:
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Because of the Civil War, two things happened that created the American beef industry:
The Union had a huge army that needed food. To meet this demand, innovative butchers in Chicago with names like Gustavus Swift and P. D. Armour acquired large buildings, hired every butcher they could find, and bought every head of livestock ... Read more
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At the same time that homesteaders were getting free land from the government, large tracts of land were granted to railroads by both the states and the federal government. The goal was to encourage the railroads to build their tracks where few people lived, and to help settle the country. The federal government was especially interested in creating a transportation system that would link the eastern and western coasts. Not only would a transcontinental railroad help populate the Great Plains, ... Read more
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The Ponca were very unhappy with the land and living conditions on the Quapaw Reservation. Much of the land was not suitable for cultivation; sanitation conditions were deplorable. Government agents refused to provide adequate farming equipment, and many of the people died from malaria. Since leaving Nebraska, nearly one-third of the tribe had died. In January 1879, Standing Bear’s son, Bear Shield, died. The distraught chief decided to return to his tribal lands in Nebraska to bury his son. It ... Read more
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In the later years of the nineteenth century, the number of homesteaders who mostly were farmers (also called "grangers") grew. This put pressure on the ranchers who were using large areas of public lands to graze their cattle. Not only were homesteaders taking the land, but they were taking the land with access to water, which the ranchers’ cattle needed.
This conflict between homesteaders and cattlemen was rooted deeply in two very different traditions of land use. The ranchers were mostly ... Read more
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The work of the Seneca Falls Convention on women’s rights did not go unnoticed in Nebraska. From the earliest days of statehood, there was a progressive contingent that argued women should be allowed to vote since the laws representatives wrote applied to women as well as men.
So when delegates gathered in 1871 to write a new constitution for the state, votes for women was one of five proposals submitted separately to the voters. There was at least enough support to ... Read more
