Victory! We have Raised $5,100 to Build a Roadside Historical Marker for DeWitty, Nebraska!

By STEW MAGNUSON

I’m happy to report that after about two months, we have managed to raise the $5,100 required to install a historical marker on Highway 83 for DeWitty, the longest lasting and most successful rural black settlement in Nebraska!

Back in the spring of 2009, I had an idea pop into my head to write a book about U.S. Highway 83 and some of the forgotten history one finds alongside it. Not more than a few seconds later, the words “Like that black town near Brownlee” came to mind.

I had known about an African-American settlement in the heart of the Sand Hills since reading an article about it in high school in Nebraskaland Magazine. I had been fascinated that such a place once existed 80 miles north of where my grandparents lived in Stapleton, but didn’t know much about it.

After doing some research into the town at the Library of Congress, I realized that there was lot more to the settlement known as DeWitty than the curiosity of a black community in a land settled mostly by whites. This was truly a remarkable community with a remarkable story and people. 

So the chapter, “A Place Called Audacious” in what would become The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: Nebraska-Kansas-Oklahoma was a special one for me.

Years later, I was driving by the Brownlee Road turnoff, and thought: “Why isn’t there one of those historical markers somewhere near here to tell folks about DeWitty?” Then I let that thought go, like so many miles on the road.

As I was putting the final touches on the book in 2014, I was fortunate enough to get in contact with Catherine Meehan Blount, a granddaughter of two of the early DeWitty settlers. At one point in our correspondence, I brought up the idea of a roadside marker. She was all for it. The next question became “What do you gotta do to get one of those things installed?”

Short answer: You have to apply. Specifically, with the Nebraska State Historical Society. So I put together the materials and sent them in along with letters of endorsement from the Cherry County Historical Society and The Great Plains Black History Museum in Omaha.

The acceptance of the applications was a shoe-in. One, because there is no doubt about the community’s historical significance. And two, it turns out the NSHS historian who approves the applications had already tried to get a marker for DeWitty and three other sites in Nebraska, but couldn’t get the Unicameral to fund them.

And therein was the catch. The Historical Society approves the markers, but applicants have to pay for them. The full-size marker is $5,100. Fundraising was something I had never done before, so that sum was a bit daunting.

The most satisfying part of the whole endeavor was the many communities who contributed.

There are many we would like to thank. I say “we” because many contributed to the cause.

First and foremost, were the descendants of DeWitty — now spread out all over the country — who chipped in to acknowledge the sacrifices their forbearers made carving out better lives for themselves in that harsh land. One descendant who prefers to remain anonymous donated $500. Albert Riley Jr., who grew up in Valentine after his family moved off the homestead and into town, stopped by the bank while in town for his 50th high school reunion, to chip in. Joyceann Gray and Marcia Thompkins,

Goldie Hayes in her Classroom. Courtesy of Joyceann Gray

relatives of Goldie Walker Hayes, a DeWitty schoolteacher and principal who remained in Cherry County to teach, were avid supporters. There were many others.

The Cherry County Historical Society, especially Joyce Muirhead, were enthusiastic about the idea, and helped set up the bank account, along with a monetary contributions. Cherry County and Valentine residents stopped in the bank to put their money in the pot as well. A big thank you to the staff of the First Security Bank in Valentine for taking the donations.

The North Platte Bulletin, North Platte Telegraph, Valentine Midland News, Stapleton Enterprise, Lincoln Journal Star and KVSH in Valentine all helped get the word out in the media, which garnered donations from throughout the state.

Many of my friends and family contributed just because I asked them to. It’s great to have such wonderful cousins, parents and friendships that go back years. I took $300

Maurice Brown. Courtesy of Catherin Meehan.

out of the profits from The Last American Highway books for the cause.

Members of the Fans of U.S. Route 83 page on Facebook also donated amounts small and large. These are people who love the backroads of America and all the history found alongside it, especially U.S. Route 83, the border to border highway. The biggest donation from this group came from member Bruce Hoffman and his wife Debbie, owners of the Common Scents greenhouse and nursery on Highway 83 south of McCook. They mailed in $500! Stop in and thank them the next time you’re in McCook.

What’s next? It is all in the hands of the state of Nebraska. The Nebraska State Historical Society will coordinate the purchase and installation of the marker and the Department of Roads will decide the best spot to place it — keeping in the mind the safety of motorists.

Look on the Fans of U.S. Route 83 facebook page for updates. And thank you all again.

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, available at Amazon.com and bookstores and gift shops along Highway 83. And The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition.

To join the Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com.  Contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a) yahoo.com

Trip to Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge Evokes Sand Hills Memories

The Niobrara River. All photos by Alan or Lori Kehr

By Alan Kehr

In May, we got to visit the Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge near Valentine, NE. After a short drive through the prairie dog town and the pasture lands we were able to hike down into the Niobrara River valley. It brought to mind the first time I’d been there as a child.

We lived 30 miles west on a hill a mile outside Nenzel in the midst of the Sand Hills, which are huge dunes covered with a thin veneer of grass. They’re a few rain drops sideways from an official desert, made habitable by the Ogallala Aquifer.  If a break in the grass develops, the wind carries away the sand below to create a blowout — a place of play for young boys.

We couldn’t build sandcastles, because the sand in the blowouts was as dry and sere as Frank Herbert’s Dune world, but reengineered by us to a world of massive construction projects, or battles between knights of old, or WWII gyrenes, or more commonly between cowboys and Indians fueled by the movies of the day – blood-thirsty savages trying to steal the land from bona fide owners by right of European heritage. Our earth moving equipment – shingles and a kitchen spoon – transformed the flat bottom into contoured hills and battle grounds. Firecrackers from the 4^th of July celebration at Grandma’s supplied our demolition requirements. Our minions were twigs and the battalions pieces of wood scavenged from a remodeling job.

The landscape we devised in the sandy blowouts was most similar to the Middle East, but sectarian violence was unknown to us and our understanding of Arab culture based

on Three Wise Men from the East – probably even beyond Omaha.

On other days, my brother, Garry, and I played two man baseball with a ball battered to the firmness of cotton candy and covered with soft leather partially held in place with a few remaining stitches. One pitched and the other hit. Homeruns were frequent because they consisted of a run to first base and back before the pitcher fielded the ball and tagged the runner.

Days were hot with the smell of dry hay, and, if the wind was in the right direction, a hint of desiccated barn yard. Many days, it carried sand with the taste and feel of grit between the teeth.

Nights were cool and dawn was best with a slight breeze and the song of nearby meadowlarks standing on fence posts. Dew on the grass brought the smell of moisture to the desert air, full and fresh. The clear sky had a slight red tint. The future was bright and the prospects for adventure boundless.

Highlights of the summer were trips to the Niobrara River, 11 miles south of Nenzel in a valley filled with verdant pine and cedar and a narrow stream with a current swift and sure, so filled with sand that a submerged hand disappeared as absolutely as in the black of night. A few minutes in that current was enough to remove the grime of hard-playing boys all the way to spotless fingernails.

Fall was a magic time in the valley of the Niobrara. We would descend with aunts, a horde of cousins, buckets, and pails. We filled them with wild plums, currents, choke cherries, and grapes. Back home we crushed the fruit, strained the juices, and Mom made the jams and jellies to sustain us through the winter, transforming her daily fresh baked bread from a wondrous delight into sheer heaven.

One year, Dad reserved part of the wild-grape juice to make wine. He fermented it in the large crock Mom used to make laundry soap from lye and the fat rendered from the slaughtered fall pig. Precleaning must have been an effort.

In later years, Mom said that the wine had a high alcohol content. Dad was the drinker in the family, buying an annual bottle of whiskey for New Year’s Eve and, with the help of neighborly card playing visits during long winter evenings, finishing it off in time for the following New Year’s celebration.

According to her story, a few months after the fermentation had started, she decided to see if the wine was ready and pulled a small glass, which she deemed satisfactory. Unfortunately, the priest made a visit that morning – a very rare and unexpected occurrence – and she believed that he caught her in a state of inebriation. Not one to keep good gossip to himself, I suspect that her worries were unfounded because I never

heard the story from another soul.

But then, our story has drifted afar from the Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge, hasn’t it?

The Visitor’s Center has been modernized and the ranger we talked with was delightful and full of information. The prairie dogs were active with the babies running around, but sticking close to mom. With all the recent rain, the river was full and moving fast. Flowers were abundant and the forest smelled of spring with sunbeams drifting through the leaves and lighting the path.

Afterward, we drove back into Valentine and had an Americano for me and a latte for Lori, the smell of fresh coffee good enough to bring tears to the eyes and strong enough to propel us on to our next stop in South Dakota – I don’t think that coffee was available in my youth.

Alan spent his early years in Nenzel, graduated from North Platte, received a degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and now lives in Austin, Texas.

Fort Niobrara NWR is located about fives miles east of Highway 83 at Valentine, Nebraska, on U.S. Highway 12. A visitor center, with displays and exhibits, a bookstore is open 8:00 am – 4:30 pm daily from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and Monday through Friday during the rest of the year (except for Federal holidays). 

 

For more on what to see along Highway 83, read The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, by Stew Magnuson, available at Amazon.com, bookstores and gift shops along Highway 83. And The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition.

To join the Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com.  Contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a) yahoo.com

 

Asian-Americans in Valentine, Nebraska: New Stories of the 'Prairie Mosaic'

By STEW MAGNUSON

For Sale at Plains Trading Co, Valentine, NE

Readers who have finished my two Highway 83 books may have picked up on a running theme. It’s best summed up in the words: the “Prairie Mosiac,” a term that speaks to all the different cultures that contributed to the development of the Great Plains. In The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, there was the story of the Negro League's Satchel Paige and integrated baseball being played in Bismarck years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the major leagues; the Jewish settler Harry Turnoy and his homestead east of Wilton; the German-Russian Welk family; the founder of Minot, Norwegian Erik Ramstad, as well as the story of the Brulé Lakotas who reside at Rosebud.

In the The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition, there is the story of the African-American DeWitty/Audacious settlement in the Sand Hills. And Garden City, Kansas, today, which has invited and absorbed waves of immigrants from all over the world to work in its meatpacking plants.

Hollywood in the 20th century largely brainwashed us into thinking the West was lily white. In fact, census records show there were Native American, black, Asian, mixed-race families in towns all over the Plains, especially in railroad towns. A typical "cowboy" on the cattle trail was more likely to speak Spanish or Swedish than English. 

When I passed through Valentine, Nebraska, in 2009, I encountered two Asian-Americans, one by design, one by accident. The vignettes show that the idea of a "Prairie Mosaic" is not part of history. It's part of life there today.

The first was the Korean-American Bum Song, who was selling bonsai plants by the side of the road. His life story is in the book. 

Bum Song, 2009

The second was an encounter I had planned. Years before, I ate at a Chinese restaurant on the south side of Valentine. I returned there in 2009 on my research trip to find out more about the family. I was curious as to how they coped in a town where there were few, if any other Asian families. When I arrived, I discovered that the first Chinese family had moved on. The Guans had taken their places.

This is a “cutting room” floor blog. I decided not to run a picture of Bum Song in the new book because it didn’t meet my standards for composition. For those who would like to see him, here is a picture!

I cut the story of Fei Guan out of the manuscript for pacing reasons. I felt the narrative was lingering too long in Valentine, and I had to move on. But I’m posting it here:

The China Cafe

The last stop on Highway 83 leaving Valentine is the town’s only Chinese restaurant, which is simply named the China Cafe.

There’s nothing fancy about the brown, square building made of corrugated steel. The interior is plain as well, with a few Asian knickknacks, posters and booths upholstered in cracking vinyl.

Fei Guan works the wok while his wife Sui waits on tables.

China Cafe, Valentine, NE, 2009. All photos by Stew Magnuson

The Guans are the town’s only Chinese family.

For Fei, it was a long journey from Hong Kong to the middle the prairie. The 40-year-old with a medium build and dark hair sticking out the back of his baseball cap left the former British colony shortly before the Chinese took the territory back in 1997. As many Chinese emigrants have since the Gold Rush days of the 1840s, he ended up in San Francisco, where he bought a restaurant. He ran it for thirteen years until his landlord just about put him out of business. Every year, he raised the rent until it came to about $6,000 a month.

It was about that time he saw an ad in a Chinese language newspaper offering a restaurant for sale in Valentine, Nebraska. Of course, he had never heard of the town, and never been to the nation’s vast interior. He had lived in two of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities, but had no experience in small towns. But he was intrigued. First, there was no competition. Drive 100 miles in any direction and there are no other Chinese restaurants. Hell, in San Francisco, you can’t walk five minutes without finding Chinese food. And not only was the business for sale, so was the property. No longer could a landlord put the squeeze on him when it came time to renew the lease.

So he bought the restaurant from the Chinese family who had owned it for seven years and moved his family to the town on the edge of the Sand Hills.

That was two years ago, and he hasn’t taken a day off since.

He closes for a half day on Christmas, but otherwise works seven days a week, including Thanksgiving.

“I want my customers to know that I’m always here.”

He gets up in the morning, brings his kids to school, and then has about two hours to fish the Niobrara River.

“I meet a lot of people when I’m fishing,” he says.

Fei Guan, 2009

The exterior and interior are plain, but the food is not. The chicken and black mushrooms is delicious and tastes more like the authentic Chinese meals one finds in San Francisco than the oily congealed food one finds in most rural Chinese restaurants. Fei doesn’t believe in the ubiquitous “Chinese buffet” that one finds in about every town nowadays. He does one on Fridays for lunch, but that’s the only concession he makes.

I tell him that the 1910 census that I had read at the historical museum shows that there was one Chinese family living in Valentine. The Cahotas ran a boarding house. Later, the family ran a five and dime store downtown. Fei is genuinely surprised, although we both agree that the name sounds more Japanese than Chinese.

Has it worked out? I ask him.

“The economy is slow, and business is down a little bit. But I can still make a living,” he says.

The End

Addendum: The fall of 2012, three years after this encounter, I had a chance to make a quick trip down Highway 83 from the Rosebud Reservation to Oakley, Kansas. I stopped in to say hello to Fei Guan and get a bite to eat. The sign was still up, but when I walked in the restaurant, it had been totally gutted. A woman came out of the kitchen and informed me that she and her husband had bought the building a few months ago, and they were going to open a gun shop in its place. The Guans had left town. She didn’t know where they went. I wonder how the Guans and Bum Song are doing, and where life has taken them five years after our paths crossed.  

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, available at Amazon.com and bookstores and gift shops along Highway 83. And The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition. Both are for sale at Plains Trading Co. in Valentine, Nebraska.

To join the Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com.  Contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a) yahoo.com

May 10, 1926: A Newly Established Great Plains Highway Association Clamors for a North-to-South Road

Look for the new book Feb. 9!

By STEW MAGNUSON

“The peppiest bunch of good road enthusiasts ever assembled in southwestern Nebraska is now within our gates—and they will not be denied their goal—a state-federal highway from Canada to the Gulf, running more or less north-south through McCook,” said the evening edition of the McCook Gazette.

It was the May 10, 1926, when some 200 businessmen from South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Texas converged at the Keystone Hotel in McCook, Nebraska, to put together the Great Plains Highway Association.

The Good Roads Movement was in full swing and about to have its greatest success. Local and national associations for decades had come together to create auto trails that would connect their towns. It was an alliance between corporations who had a vested interest in promoting car travel—automobile, tire, cement manufacturers—and local businessmen who wanted the same. By 1923, Ford was cranking out more than 2 million Model Ts per year. Motorists were clamoring for better driving conditions.

Such associations had been popping up everywhere. The Lincoln Highway was the first transcontinental road. The Bankhead was the second, but took a more southerly route.

Between cities and small towns, there was little in the way of actual roads, just ruts in the mud. Some of these associations made logos they put on signs to help guide motorists. Many of the trails converged and associations competed to draw motorists to their trails. 

By 1926, there were some 250 named trails in the United States. Many of them were aspirations—just lines on a map with no real backing or improved roads.

The Good Roads Movement’s ultimate goal was to cajole the federal government into doing more to build highways. And in that, it had already succeeded by 1926. The American Association of State Highway Officials, with the blessing of the federal government, had already released its draft proposal of numbered highways and their routes. The committee tasked with creating the new system had long decided to do away with named auto trails. The descriptive, colorful names—the Dixie Highway, the Blue Pole Highway, the Pikes Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway—would not be official names.

The final list would be released in November, and it would mark the beginning of the state and federal partnership to standardize roads in America, the Good Roads Movement’s ultimate goal. The logos would soon be replaced by the federal shield sign still in use today.

That was undoubtedly known by most of those attending, but it didn’t damper their enthusiasm for a Great Plains, north-to-south highway. At that point, there were no highways going north to south between Kansas City and Denver. The closest was the Meridian Highway, which hugged the state lines to the east (present day U.S. 81). McCook good road promoters had succeeded two decades ago helping to develop the O.L.D (Omaha Lincoln Denver) trail across the bottom half of the state. By 1926, it had expanded to the D.L.D., the Detroit-Lincoln-Denver trail.

The businessmen came together in the afternoon to adopt a constitution and bylaws and to elect officers. The president would be Charles O. Woods of North Platte; vice president, A.B. Whitney of Murdo, South Dakota and the secretary-treasurer was V. Barbazette of McCook.

One by one the attendees stood up to add their support to the growing chorus of those who thought there needed to be a north-to-south road. When it came to highways, the country was still following in the footsteps of the Conestoga wagons on their east-to-west journeys. When the first draft of what would be the federal highway was released in 1925, there were no north-south roads in the middle of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas. That could not have sat well with the citizens of Minot, Bismarck, Pierre, North Platte, McCook, Oberlin, Garden City and Liberal.

Connecting the prairielands to the ports in South Texas was one of the new association’s stated goals.

The guest of honor at the meeting was Nebraska State Engineer Roy Cochran. Nebraska had already put in place a taxation system that favored the sparsely populated part of the state. Some $1.5 million had already been spent improving the road between North Platte and McCook, he said. From North Platte to Valentine, the heart of the foreboding Sand Hills, there was almost nothing, he said. The state was bogged down in the sandy soil as the Blue Pole Highway— a Fremont to Chadron east-to-west road—stretched westwards. Only 25 miles had been completed in two years in Cherry County.  

“The construction difficulties and the expense is so great that the progress has been quite slow,” Cochran said. The fact remained, that most commerce was still moving east to west, he told the audience. Nevertheless, he endorsed the idea of a north-to-south road as long as funding was available.

Some of the largest contingents at the meeting had come from the Sand Hills—towns such as Stapleton, Gandy, Tryon, Thedford and Brownlee—to lend their voices. Forty of the delegates came from Stapleton alone. The Sandhillers were a gloomy, pessimistic bunch, according to their dire warnings about road building in the dunes. Years of trying to traverse them had no doubt left psychological scars.

John Turner of Thedford had been trying to develop an east-to-west  “Potash Highway” (present day State Highway 2) for years, but to no avail.

“If you take a trip through the Sand Hills you will be surprised at [the] roads because there are none,” he said. He warned about the terrible, shifting sands.

“For God’s sake, give us a road,” he said.

A Mr. Christensen of Valentine did his best to dispel his town’s Wild West reputation  as he encouraged delegates to visit his fine city.

“We don’t have so many saloons and not nearly so much gambling…We want you to come up there fishing I will show you that if you come up there fishing you will get some fish,” he said.

“When I came down here today I was tired and a little bit discouraged until I saw all these men and I am very much enthused about this road and I am going back to Valentine very glad I came down.”

A Valentine to North Platte road tentatively called the Kinkaid Highway had been proposed a decade earlier, but nothing came of that effort, either.

The Keystone Hotel — only two years old at that time — served more than 600 meals that day. After the meeting adjourned, the McCook High School Boys Band under the direction of Leo Kelly provided entertainment in the afternoon.

At the packed banquet room that evening, a trio of Robert Boles on flute, Charles McCarl on the violin and singer Miss Lucile Hiler, provided the music.

After the meal was served, the constitution and bylaws were formally adopted. The terminal points would be Regina, Saskatchewan, and Mexico City, Mexico.

There were no delegates from Canada or North Dakota noted in the reports of the meeting. John McCurdy from Sweetwater, Texas, had traveled the longest distance to be there at 900 miles.

The meeting ended on a high note, with a great deal of enthusiasm and optimism. But the fact of the matter is that by May 10, 1926, the end was near for the auto trails. The federal highway system final draft released only five months after the establishment of the association would show the beginnings of Highway 83 from just east of Bismarck down to Pierre, South Dakota.

The association in about 1929 published a map of the final route from Regina to Laredo.  It would more or less follow present day U.S. 83 from Minot to Abilene, Texas. Eventually, a U.S. Canada Highway 83 Association would emerge.

As for those poor Sandhillers, it would be more than a generation before a dependable road would cut through the dunes. The last part of Highway 83 to be paved was from Thedford to Stapleton in September 1959.

Sources: McCook Gazette, May 10, 1926 and May 12, 1926 editions.

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, available at Amazon.com and bookstores and gift shops along Highway 83. And The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition to be released Feb. 9.

To join the Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com.  Contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a) yahoo.com

Promoting Eco-Tourism Along Highway 83's Prairie-Lands

By STEW MAGNUSON

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Center for Great Plains Studies

has kicked off a new campaign “Visit the Prairie,” and has been releasing a series of tourism posters online that will soon be available for purchase.

The campaign focuses on eco-tourism rather than the region’s rich history to lure visitors off the interstates.

“This work tries to promote ecotourism as a strategy for preserving the enormous and precious biodiversity of the Great Plains grasslands,” its website explains.

And that’s a great thing. For those who saw my series of book talks this year for The Last American Highway: The Dakotas, read this blog, or are members of the Fans of U.S. Route 83 Facebook page, I do my best to promote travel on Highway 83 specifically, and the Great Plains and all backroads in general. The beauty of the region is a running theme in all these writings.

This campaign is sorely needed. Let’s face it. Our nation has given the prairie lands short-shrift when it comes to habitat preservation. This began in the 1800s with the wonton destruction of the American bison, continued with the Army Corps of Engineers’ damming of our rivers and the ecological destruction brought on by mono-agriculture and overgrazing.

Even in these more enlightened times — with groups like the Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund becoming more involved in the region — there is a lot of room for improvement.

How are we going to encourage travelers to either make the Great Plains a destination unto themselves, or at least stop for a day or two on their way to or from the Rockies or Black Hills?

Let’s look at some examples of what can be done along Highway 83 in Nebraska. From Valentine to McCook, the topography surrounding Highway 83 is beautiful from beginning to end. North of North Platte, it travels through the Sand Hills, which are not only Nebraska’s best-kept secret from tourists, but the nation’s. Yet the state has done virtually nil to promote them as a destination. Give me just one “Visit the Sand Hills!” sign on Interstate 80, please!

Highway 83 is the main conduit taking travelers from I-80 through the stunning and unique Sand Hills to the Niobrara River, the Fort Niobrara Wildlife Refuge and Nature Conservancy's Niobrara Valley Preserve there — one of the state’s prime eco-tourism destinations.

On the way is the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge. It has some nice kiosks explaining to motorists about the area's eco-system. That’s a good start. But what we need is a serious interpretive center, well-developed walking paths and auto tours through the heart of the hills.

It should be as impressive as the Audubon National Wildlife Refuge on Lake Audubon on Highway 83 near Washburn, North Dakota. I stopped at both refuges in April and there is a jarring difference.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the Audubon Refuge and spent a morning there soaking in the sounds of dozens of bird species. It was an amazing symphony. But that lake isn’t even supposed to be there. It was a creation of the Army Corps of Engineers. Its relatively new center has displays, a gift shop, knowledgeable rangers there to answer questions, a nice walking path in back, and auto trails for those who can’t get around as well as they once did. 

Meanwhile, the Sand Hills has no dedicated interpretive center to explain their creation, eco-system or the importance to the nation of the Ogallala Aquifer that lies underneath. The money to build and staff such an interpretive center would come from the federal government. That means Nebraska’s congressional delegation needs to make this happen. And that means their lawmakers' constituents need to encourage them.

Meanwhile, Nebraska Public Power District wants to string ugly, giant electric towers right along Highway 83 on this main road taking travelers to the two refuges, and the little talked about, but stunningly beautiful Dismal River Valley. They would run from Stapleton to Thedford.

I have written Letters to the Editors, and posted my opinion on NPPD's comments page, written a letter to Valentine’s own Sen. Deb Fischer. I’ve only heard back from the landowners who would be affected.

Where is the outrage from the rest of the state? Where is the groundswell of opposition from those who care about the Sand Hills and eco-tourism? I’m not hearing it.

But NPPD is still taking comments. The first “P” stands for “Public.” I hope the public cares about the state’s vista-scapes and starts a ground-swell of opposition to this boneheaded plan before it’s too late.

(There are public hearings scheduled for November. Link here for a schedule and to leave comments. Tell NPPD it can post pictures of rainbows and sunsets behind the towers, but they are still ugly.)

Farther north in South Dakota, here is what you see when entering the Fort Pierre

Photo by Stew Magnuson

National Grasslands. A sign reading: “Fort Pierre National Grasslands.” The next thing you see is a sign that says: “Leaving Fort Pierre National Grasslands.” Not a single kiosk, or anything in between. There are some wooden boxes where you can pick up a map, but they are hard to spot. Again, no interpretive center on par with what the prairie deserves.

The Kansas Department of Tourism, meanwhile, has a scenic byways campaign that includes a long stretch of Highway 83 on its Western Vistas Historic Byway route. It has setting up some kiosks explaining the region’s natural history south of Oakley. I haven’t been there since they were installed, but I’m looking forward to seeing them next year.

This column was intended as food for thought for those wanting to promote travel in the region, rather than travel tips for those wanting to see some of these sites centering around eco-tourism on Highway 83. I’ll leave that to another column. 

I hope the Center of Great Plains Studies really starts a movement. To preserve our natural heritage, people must care about it. They must have opportunities to emotionally connect with nature, and eco-tourism is one means to do so. 

Check out its website, including a Top 50 Eco-tourism Sites on the Great Plains. 

Whether it’s hiking, camping, canoeing, biking, hunting, fishing or simply “taking a drive or a ride” on a road like Highway 83 and soaking in the topography, connecting

ourselves to the land in these modern times is more important than ever.

The UNL Center of Great Plains Studies’ “Visit The Prairie” campaign is a great idea. I’ll be the first to buy the bison poster when they go on sale.  

 

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, available at Amazon.com and bookstores and gift shops along Highway 83. 

To join the Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com.  Contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a) yahoo.com