Haying at the Hawthorne Cattle Company, near Arthur, helps feed the ranch's "fleet" of roughly 500 horses.

TRAVEL
NEBRASKA
Arrayed along an invisible line, the 100th meridian, the Great Plains states of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska invite modern-day pioneers to explore their rural past.

By Alan Wilkinson

My first stop in Nebraska was at Cozad. Strange sort of name; interesting sort of place—unique too. It takes its name from the entrepreneur who dreamed it up back in 1872. John Cozad was an authentic opportunist. A professional gambler, he wore the jazzy vest and diamond stickpin; he carried the silver-topped cane.

He had the bright idea of creating a settlement right here on the 100th meridian. He chose a spot on the banks of the Platte River, a natural enough thoroughfare that the Oregon Trail travelers—and later the Union Pacific Railroad and Pony Express—already had exploited.

But while the town Cozad envisaged eventually grew and prospered, he never saw it happen. Implicated in the murder of an adversary, he left town “between two days” and assumed a false identity. It was his legacy to American culture rather than his legacy to the Great Plains economy that lived on. His son, a teenager when the Cozad excitement erupted, was to resurface in New York City and become one of the great names of the modern art movement around the turn of the century. He called himself Robert Henri, and they have a museum dedicated to him right there in town.

If any Nebraska towns had fighting chances of making names for themselves it was surely these Platte River communities. They had some of the best farmland in the state, access to plentiful supplies of water, and a superb communications network. In the 1920s the road that connected the dots along the flat and fertile river valley was designated the Lincoln Highway, America’s first paved coast-to-coast road. But that, of course, was to be overshadowed by Route 66 from Chicago to L.A. And towns like Cozad and Gothenburg and Lexington—each visible from the next by its massive grain elevator— were soon starting to shrink. It’s Kearney, a college town, and North Platte, final home of Buffalo Bill, which are thriving now. Nevertheless, Cozad is an attractive friendly sort of town.

The story goes that the 100th meridian crosses the railroad tracks where John Cozad and the Union Pacific officials said it did—at the depot. But according to new surveys, via satellite observations, the true line is a few hundred yards further west, by the airport. It seemed a shame somehow, that the city’s founder should get it wrong—but I suspect the Chamber of Commerce sympathizes with the old fellow. While there is indeed a limestone post marking the line that I’d followed for almost 2,000 miles, the historical marker remains where it always has been, down by the depot.

Head north of Interstate 80, and you’re soon into the Sand Hills. I’ve been in love with this area since my first visit as a student of literature 10 years ago. It was the writings of Mari Sandoz (Cheyenne Autumn, Crazy Horse and the biography of her father, Old Jules) that first sent me up state Highway 2 to visit the gruff old pioneer’s last surviving daughter, who lived alone six miles up a dirt track and kept a .410-gauge Winchester propped against the door.

That, though, was on the far western edge of what is the largest dune complex in the western hemisphere. This trip was right through the heart of the Sand Hills, and I was rewarded with sights I’ll always treasure: the moment when I was hiking through a silent valley and a doe emerged from the grass with two young, stood still just long enough for me to draw and hold a single breath, then melted away; the moment when I was hurrying north to Valentine under a sheet of grey clouds, evening closing in, the thin carpet of grass still cloaked in winter dun, and a great splash of white exploded from between two hills— my first sighting of the Sand Hills pelicans.

When I camped at Merritt Reservoir, the skies cleared, and the temperature dropped to 34 degrees overnight. I left my breakfast cooking on the fire, trotted around a wooded rise to warm myself up—and stumbled across one of those natural phenomena so rare, you’re tempted to feel it must mean something. As a huge full moon touched the western horizon, the sun rose in the east. For a treasured moment, I could see a half of each, perfectly balanced on opposite sides of the earth, one aglow with the promise of warmth, the other cold, pale, slinking quietly from view. How common an occurrence is that? For me it was a first, and I’d be happy for it to be a last. As to meaning, it seemed somehow to tell me that whatever else happened, here was one reward for following that imaginary line all that way.