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Published: March 18th 2012
Nebraska Sandhills
Cattle (in the far distance) range in the endless Nebraska SandhillsNebraska Sandhills
Today, I crossed one of the most evocative regions of the entire trip so far, the
Nebraska Sandhills.
This region is a place for visitors to lose themselves, and possibly find themselves.
Here the farms of the Great Plains turn into the wide open spaces of the west.
The road starts with a premonition of what is to come.
It’s located next to a big rail yard.
The rail yard is filled with coal trains.
In the relatively flat plains, trains are miles long.
The road runs next to a busy rail line, so those trains were passing by on a regular basis.
The first part of the road looks like the Nebraska I knew already, flat and covered with farms.
Things changed soon enough.
The plants disappeared to be replaced with grass and wheat.
Houses became further apart.
The only trees were either obviously planted or located along lazy streams.
The biggest change was the hills.
The hills looked more like waves than conventional mounds.
A road cut revealed the reason.
The
Mason City
Welcome to the entirety of Main Street, Mason City Nebraska hills are actually
sand dunes with grass on them!
The Sandhills region is the largest grass covered dune system in the world.
The scenery is haunting, and creates an irresistible urge to take photos.
A single tree lies next to a dirt road surrounded by a sea of grass.
A winding muddy river is lined with trees.
A depression filled with swamp grass lies surrounded by hills.
A crest in the road reveals hills like waves stretching to the horizon.
Windmills lie isolated on the endless grassy hills.
A herd of cattle huddles in a depression, looking for shade in the heat.
Towns are few and far between, and the further west the road goes the smaller and farther apart they became.
Eventually, even the houses and windmills disappeared, leaving the railroad as the only sign of civilization.
This landscape is profoundly empty, one of the least populated areas of the US south of Alaska.
Mason City Nebraska
Some of the towns are memorable places to stop.
When it was founded in the middle 1800s,
Mason City was an important place.
It has a
Sandhills River
A typical river crossing in the sandhills. The sand just under the grass is readily apparent here perfectly preserved three block brick Victorian main street from those days, with a post office, stores, tiny city hall, and bank.
The street ends at a jewel of a city park with a band shell.
The place is almost the perfect stereotype of what a small town should look like.
Unfortunately, the town has shriveled away over the decades and is nearly a ghost town now.
Dunning is most notable as the location of a regional high school.
Schools in rural areas tend to be small, and this one was very small.
The entire building was the size of two football fields.
The actual football field, with two sets of bleachers, was next to the school.
A dusty baseball diamond was across the street, next to a cow pasture.
About the only other sign of civilization was some houses along the road, and the railroad.
Broken Bow is unbelievably huge for this area, with a population of nine thousand.
It was the only city on the entire route with fast food restaurants.
I had lunch at a family run diner called
Tumbleweed Cafe.
Sandhills high football field
Sandhills high school football field, in Dunning Nebraska Everyone there was local, discussing crop yields and other farm issues.
Like Stean’s Café, this one has tribute to local military heroes (see
The Cumberland).
Nebraska National Forest
Halfway through the drive falls the strangest site yet on the trip,
Nebraska National Forest.
The logical reaction should be “A forest of any kind is in Nebraska? Say what?”
This forest is completely man made.
In the early 1900s, a botany professor from the University of Nebraska,
Charles Bessey, became convinced that local farmers were using up the soil.
He feared that this would destabilize the land and the soil would blow away.
His proposed solution to this problem was to plant trees to act as windbreaks.
He convinced hundreds of volunteers to plant a forest on the sand hills to research which trees would be best for this environment.
Eventually, the federal government acquired the forest.
Needless to say, his vision was prescient, as the Dust Bowl proved him right.
Research done in Nebraska National Forest proved crucial to subsequent conservation efforts.
Driving through the forest is both normal and surreal.
On one level, it
Nebraska National Forest
A completely man-made forest in Nebraska looks just like any other pine forest on rolling hills.
The vistas are pretty.
The trees were planted in random patterns, so the forest looks natural.
On another level, it looks really out of place, because the landscape abruptly changes to grass just beyond its limits.
A fire tower exists on top of the highest hill within the forest.
The tower is closed but the parking lot provides good views of the area.
Further west, I passed through the little town of
Mullen.
Some towns around here get to boast of being the largest in their county.
Mullen is the ONLY incorporated town in its county.
Imagine a place where a small grocery store is the only one for thirty miles in any direction to sense the emptiness of this landscape.
The drive ends abruptly at the town of Alliance.
The rolling hills simply disappear, replaced by flat farmland.
The railroad runs into a huge yard.
I turned north at this point to see a famous work of folk art.
Carhenge
In 1987, farmer
Jim Reinders painted a
Carhenge
Auto folk art outside Alliance Nebraska large number of old cars grey and stuck them in the ground in a circular pattern.
He called the work Carhenge, after
Stonehenge in England.
Decades later, they are still there, and are now a
tourist attraction.
The owners have added other example of what they call “auto art”, including a dinosaur made out of old doors, a flowerbed made of old transmissions, and stellae made of cars welded together.
These last examples look worryingly unstable.
I enjoyed the site as much for the surrounding prairie, which is one of the few examples of undisturbed grass in the area.
It was filled with wildflowers and other plants normally not seen around here.
Overall, I enjoyed the visit and every fan of folk art owes themselves a look at this place.
Heading out of Alliance, I got a lesson on the power of nature.
A very large black cloud was moving in from the west.
In the plains, views are long distance so what looks like bad weather may never actually reach.
When the cloud started to flash, I worried a bit.
Still, no thunder so it
The storm closes in
A huge thunderstorm, heading straight for me. was quite a bit away.
Then, I heard thunder.
The cloud was six miles away and closing.
I began to feel like a very small speck in a vast space as the cloud blocked out the sky.
Weather out here can be severe with hail and even tornadoes, and I had nowhere to hide.
When the cloud finally hit, it was thankfully just pouring rain.
After it passed, I got yet another double rainbow.
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