East Mexican Canyon Trail, Fort Robinson State Park, July 2022 Fort Robinson, a former U.S. Army base dating to the late 19th century, may be the most popular destination in the state park that bears its name—but the natural highlights lie beyond to the north and west in the sedimentary rock canyons and high bluffs …
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Blackhills Overlook Trail, Chadron State Park, July 2022 Rising suddenly and surprisingly, the scenic Pine Ridge cuts like a furrowed eyebrow across northwest Nebraska, revealing an elevated landscape of thick ponderosa forests and chalk canyons. The 100-mile ridge is a sudden break from the flats of the Great Plains and bears some of the best …
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Scotts Bluff National Monument, July 2022 A key milestone along the Oregon and California historic trails, the chalky hightops of Scotts Bluff rise skyward above the broad Platte River Valley in western Nebraska. Here pioneers heading west along the North Platte had to detour south to evade some nasty badlands, bringing them up and over …
Daemonelix Trail, Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, July 2022 Imagine a creature roughly approximating a beaver or large prairie dog but one that digs holes in a spiral nearly 10 feet deep, forming tunnels resembling a corkscrew or drill bit: this is the curious activity of the prehistoric paleocastor, which lived between 20-30 million years …
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Fossil Hills Trail, Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, July 2022 Agate Fossil Beds National Monument in northwest Nebraska was established a mere quarter century ago—in June 1997—but its famed mammal fossils date to the early Paleocene Epoch, just after the mass extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Dozens of fossil skeletons were discovered in …
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Fort Falls Trail, Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge, July 2022 A pioneer of environmental conservation, President Theodore Roosevelt created, with the stroke of a pen in January 1912, Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge in northern Nebraska, protecting a “preserve and breeding ground for native birds.” The refuge also protects herds of bison and elk—rarities on …
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Smith Falls, Smith Falls State Park, July 2022 “Honestly, it’s not for everyone” – so goes the official tourism slogan for the state of Nebraska, a Great Plains state notable mostly for its fields of corn and the invention of the Reuben sandwich and Kool-Aid. The tourism campaign is tongue-in-cheek, of course, but it may …
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Calumet Bluff Trail, Gavin's Point Dam area, July 2022 During the first summer of the famed Lewis & Clark Expedition in 1804, the travelling company camped for four nights at the base of a high bluff along the Missouri River, described by the party as “composed of a yellowish red, and brownish clay as hard …
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