Across the Steppes of America, Part 2

When Henryk Sienkiewicz crossed the Great Plains on his way to California and adventure in 1876, I assume his train took the "Golden Spike" route, crossing Nebraska and southern Wyoming, then Utah and Nevada on the way to the Sierra Nevada. 

(By contrast, today's Amtrak California Zephyr opts for mountain scenery, passing from Nebraska into northeast Colorado, stopping in Denver, then entering the Moffat Tunnel, and following the canyons of the Fraser and Colorado rivers to Grand Junction, and thence west through Utah.)

I was not shooting many photos as I drove north on Colorado 71, mainly trying to keep the truck between the white lines in the face of strong NW wind.

There was a quick stop at the Cabela's "mother ship" in Sidney, Nebraska. The place was not as depressing as I described last year, but it cannot be doing the sales it was five years ago. Once again, on a bright morning in hunting season, I was able to park almost next to the front door. I needed a cot to sleep on in my friend Galen's under-reconstruction house, so I dashed in, found on, grabbed a bag of jerky and was back on the road.

Hay bale and field of unharvested sunflowers, south central North Dakota

 (ND Hwy 31).

Sunflowers came from North America, were exported to Europe, bred for size and oil production, and returned around 1880 as the "Mammoth Russian" variety.  Plants and people from southern Russia and Ukraine were arriving on the prairies of the US and Canada then. (Unfortunately, Kali tragus, the "tumbling tumbleweed," was one of them.) Now I see sunflowers and think of (a) gamebirds and (b) the viral video of the Ukrainian sunflower death curse delivered at the beginning of the invasion. It must be working.

An eastern North Dakota steppe view, but with a Lutheran spire instead of Orthodox dome.

The Sheyenne River creates a little topography in eastern North Dakota.

Stepples mean grains. These are just some of the grain elevators storing corn,
soybeans, etc. in Finley, North Dakota. Sign directs grain-truck drivers: "Keep line moving. Thank you."

Further south, in central Nebraska, the Sandhills are grass-covered sand dunes, sort of honorary steppes. Where did the sand come from? The winds blew it east from the Rockies after the ice melted last time. Fine grazing for cattle and/or buffalo — not suitable for growing crops in rows.

Part of the Valentine National Wildife Refuge, Nebraska.

Sandhills people look to the sky. Sonrise Hill in Thetford, Nebraska, hosts
Easter sunrise worship services, weather permitting.

I like it when we honor the long-term world rather than just people:
sculpture of life-size blue herons at I-76 rest area in Julesburg, Colorado,
in the state's northeast corner.

Tarantula Tourism Is Taken, Why not Tumbleweeds?

Migrating tarantua in southern Colorado (12News Denver).

For polar bear tourism, Churchill, Manitoba, is the spot. For grizzly bears, probably Yellowstone. For sandhill cranes, try western Nebraska or the annual festival in Monte Vista, Colorado. For snow geese, it's Lamar, Colorado.

For tarantulas, it will be La Junta, Colorado. The financing is in place.

Adding to the news of the new logo, director Pam Denahy said the board has received $20.000 in a grant from the Colorado Tourism Board, La Junta matched it with $5,000 for an educational campaign on the Tarantula. It would include creating a microsite with the Visit La Junta Site that would focus on inspiring responsible and respectful visitation during the migration season. That includes advice on how to visit the tarantulas and how to leave them alone.

Denahy said that information became much needed. "We even got a call, I think, last summer from a pet shop in Denver saying that people were taking the tarantulas from here and trying to sell them up in Denver," she replied.

 OK, so tarantulas are taken. What about tumbleweeds? The migration takes place in the early winter, and it is "oddly terrifying."

 

A Depressing Visit to the Cabela's Mothership

Entrance to the Cabela's store in Sidney, Nebraska.

I first visited Cabela's headquarters store in Sidney, Nebraska, when it was still in an old brick commercial building downtown. Having little money, I headed straight for the "bargain cave," the basement, where I bought a pair of shoe-pacs (leather tops, rubber bottoms) that lasted me for years. They were marked XXX inside the tongues — not for adult content, but because someone had ordered them by mail and then returned them.

Then the company built a new store out on Interstate 80, with parking for truckers and RV-ers. Stopping there on trips to the Black Hills or North Dakota became a regular thing — particularly on the way home, thinking "I really need a blaze orange cap with ear flaps for those cold windy North Dakota prairie days," or whatever.

It was that way last Saturday. My old waterfowling cap no longer fit me. I doubt that my skull had grown, so probably the cap had shrunk. So I went Valentine -> Hay Springs -> Alliance -> Sidney and pulled into the parking lot of the "mothership." Which was not very full. During hunting season.

I had last visited in 2018, about a year after Cabela's had merged with Bass Pro Shops.  Here's the corporate blather:

“We are excited to unite these iconic American brands to better serve our loyal customers and fellow outdoor enthusiasts,” Bass Pro founder and CEO Johnny Morris said. “As we move forward, we are committed to retaining everything customers love about both Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s by creating a ‘best-of-the-best’ experience that includes the superior products, outstanding customer service and exceptional value our customers have come to expect. We’re also deeply motivated by the potential to significantly advance key conservation initiatives.”

A marriage: Cabela's was more hunting than fishing, although they have lots of fishing gear. Bass Pro Shops was more about fishing. Cabela's codes "Northern," while Bass Pro Shops codes "Southern." The Cabela's snack display now includes Moon Pies next to the buffalo jerky. (I believe that a Moon Pie is considered "iconic" elsewhere; I have never eaten one.)

Oh yeah, the same holding company, Great American Outdoors Group, also owns Sportsman's Warehouse.

A year post-merger, the first thing I noticed in 2018 was that the Bargain Cave was gone. I had found some good deals there over the years, including a half-price set of luggage that I crammed into the Jeep circa 2012 and am still using,

Once it was the Bargain Cave; now it is the Camo Cave. If you think of camo
as a lifestyle statement, this is your destination. But no insulated billed caps.

I

But when I went to the Camo Cave last Saturday looking for a fall/winter camouflage cap with ear flaps, there was no such thing on sale. (My old cap carried the Cabela's logo. What happened to them? Not in the online catalog either.)

Meanwhile, the snack bar was closed and dark. I told M. about that when I came home that night, and she said, "The amenities are the first to go." 

Yep. Downward spiral.

The merger, pushed by a hedge fund that owned a sizeable share of Cabela's, was a gut punch to the little town of Sidney. The corporate headquarters had employed about 2,000 people, plus there were spin-off businesses such as Cabela's bank, which issued their affinity-group credit card, a travel agency for hunting trips, and so on.

In 2018, the ax fell. According to the Sidney Sun-Telegraph, 

"What's going to happen on the hill" has been the question many have tried to guess as they hope for their future in Sidney.

That question was answered late last week when those employed at Cabela's headquarters received letters outlining a severance package for those voluntarily leaving the company. It is believed that the letters were sent to the majority, if not all, of those employed at Cabela's corporate headquarters.

That was confirmed Tuesday by Bass Pro spokesman Jack Wlezien, who said that while there might be some exceptions due to individual circumstances, "for the most part, everyone got one."

Bass Pro Shops is headquartered in Springfield, Mo., and most of the jobs went there. Fox News' Tucker Carlson reported in December 2019,

One former [Sidney] employee, speaking on condition of anonymity due to fear of retribution, said, “I cried the second I got the phone call. I couldn't help it. I bawled.”

[Mayor Roger] Galloway noted that “Cabela’s was the keystone employer in town. Everything, not everything, but most things revolved around that" . . . .

City official Melissa Norgard told Tucker Carlson Tonight, “We were going to build a new housing subdivision to meet housing needs . . .  instead, we are working our tails off to try to figure out a way to survive.”

Tucker Carlson Tonight found the proposed subdivision.  It’s full of empty lots. The houses were never built.

Local residents told Tucker Carlson Tonight that it’s hard for them to leave the town as housing values have collapsed.

I just felt that the mood in the store was depressed, and the employees fewer and less well-informed. I had one particular hunting item in mind to buy, and after a bum steer from clerk #1, it took three more sales clerks to help me find it. 

The selection in 12 ga. steel shotgun shells was #2 or nothing — but that could be part of the Great Ammo Shortage, I don't know.

The whole place just felt . . . diminished.

So much for the mothership.

What's Wrong with Arbor Day?

Born in southern Colorado, I spent much of my childhood in South Dakota, living where the Black Hills met the prairie. When it came to trees, the ethos was Trees Are Good — Absence of Trees is Bad. 

One Arbor Day we pupils at Canyon Lake Elementary School in Rapid City were herded out on the front lawn to watch a tree-planting. As best I can tell from Google Maps, that tree is still there, although its top looks a little drought-damaged.

Two hours south of Rapid City is Chadron, Nebraska, gateway to the Nebraska National Forest, "the largest hand-planted forest in the U.S." Not-coincidentally, the first Arbor Day in America was held in Nebraska and marked by massive tree-plantings throughout that state.

President Theodore Roosevelt thought that Arbor Day was a splendid idea and issued a national proclamation to that effect in 1907.

Trees Are Good, right? Or as the bumper sticker has it, "Trees Are The Answer."

Yet even in Nebraska, not everyone thinks so.

Chris Helzer, who is the Nature Conservancy’s director of science in Nebraska, speaks out against the Trees Are Good attitude beyond Arbor Day, when it affects prairie ecologies, in a blog post titled "The Darker Side of Tree Planting in the Great Plains."

Euro-American cultural attitudes, once again, collided with ecological realities, he writes,

In 1907, a combination of those [western Nebraska] tree plantations was designated as the Nebraska National Forest, something many Nebraskans were and are proud of.  I’ve always seen that whole process as a kind of sad appeal for respect (‘See, we DO have forests in Nebraska!’)  It’s like an accomplished and popular actor, musician, and philanthropist feeling inferior their whole life because they’re not good at basketball – and repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) trying out for teams. . . .

We have a lot of work to do if we’re going to get the public to support prairie conservation. Tree planting isn’t the problem, and neither are the people and organizations who advocate for it. Trees are very nice. Some of my best friends have trees.

The problem is that tree planting is linked to an unsavory and unfortunate legacy in the Great Plains that still colors perceptions today. We need to separate the reasonable practice of planting a tree for shade, shelter, or fruit from the concept that white Europeans have a God-given right and duty to convert barren prairie wastelands into neat rows of corn and trees. I’m sure most people aren’t consciously making that connection as they dig a hole for their new apple tree seedling, but that doesn’t mean the cultural influence isn’t lurking in the background.

He makes a good argument: healthy prairie ecosystems are wonderfully complex, and yes, they do store CO2, if that is on your mind. We could let prairie be prairie without "improving" it  — although even Helzer admits that shelterbelts are OK around farmsteads.

Piñones 2: The Lemonade Stand Rule

Bagged piñon nuts for sale by a roadside vendor.

The "Lemonade Stand Rule" originated when I was driving one time on US 20 across western Nebraska. I went through a little town — Rushville? Hay Springs? —  and saw two little kids selling lemonade on the sidewalk in front of a Victorian house.

It was a picture-perfect small town scene. I was trying to be a photojournalist and to build up my stock-photo portfolio. But I knew that if I stopped to photograph them properly, I would have to track down a parent and get a signed photo release, which would mean some explaining— and did I really want to do that when I had an interview scheduled with this USFWS guy at Valentine National Wildlife Refuge (further east) later that afternoon?

I eased off the gas, thought for moment, and then drove on. But I soon berated myself on two counts: "You dummy! There were those kids alone under a big prairie sky. At least you could have bought some lemonade to cheer them up! And why didn't you take the time to get a good clear photo? You'll never be a professional!"

The Lemonade Stand Rule (LSR) states that unless I am extremely pressed for time or the traffic is impossible, I will always stop for kids' lemonade stands. In this over-regulated age, selling lemonade is a sem-Free Range Kids things to do, and the sellers should be supported.

(There should be an Oshá Stand Rule too, after the time I failed to stop at a table selling oshá root down in San Luis — and something bad happened.)

What about piñon nuts (piñones) then? 

Last January I was driving and saw a pickup parked by the side of the road with a sign advertising piñon nuts. I applied the LSR, made a quick left across the oncoming traffic and pulled up behind it.

I got to talking with the vendor—he was a re-seller, a local guy—and we were trading a little basic info. He said he lived in the Wet Mountains, and I said, "Oh, up on XXXX  Creek?" and I was right. We had some things in common, and when he volunteered that he had done a little federal prison time (for a nonviolent offense nearly twenty years ago), I knew exactly what that had been about.

The nuts were not cheap. My last post explained why that is. But I bought a small bag and got back in the Jeep, thinking, "I must have lived here for a while."  (I have the photos too, but I am not using them here.)

Please stop for lemonade stands. Fight the Machine.

Nebraska Cattle and a Lemonade Stand

Along US 20 in the Nebraska Sandhills

"Pastoralists often have the same distinct qualities of personality regardless of the region of the world in which they live.  Specifically, men in a local group tend to be cooperative with each other and aggressive towards outsiders.  They usually can make important economic decisions quickly and act on them independently.  They have a profound emotional attachment to their animals."

Dennis O'Neill

"Patterns of Subsistence: Pastoralism"

(study materials for a cultural anthropology class)

Nebraska Sandhills from space, 2001 (Wikipedia).

I was flying from London to Denver, sitting ahead of two young English guys who had bought a ski-holiday package in Breckenridge. I think it was their first trip to the United States. The airplane was gradually descending over the South Dakota and Nebraska, when one of them spoke up: "What's that?"

I had a window seat, so I looked down.

There were the Nebraska Sandhills, looking like multiple loads dropped by a gigantic dump truck. Unlike hills formed by erosion, these are grass-covered sand dunes, formed by particles eroded and wind-carried from the Rocky Mountains when the last Ice Age ended.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) designated the Sandhills as an ecoregion, distinct from other grasslands of the Great Plains. According to their assessment, as much as 85% of the ecoregion is intact natural habitat, the highest level in the Great Plains. This is chiefly due to the lack of crop production: most of the Sandhills land has never been plowed. ("Sandhills (Nebraska).")

As we dropped lower, the two Brits, coming from a land of winding lanes, were equally amazed at Colorado State Highway 71, running ruler-straight for miles north of Brush and I-76.

Nebraska State Highway 2 gives the best east-west trip through the Sandhills, with US 83 the best north-south view.

For variety, this time I took US 20 west from Valentine, which brought up an old memory.

I was driving it the other way, having left southern Colorado early and hoping to make it Valentine in order to interview this staffer at the Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge office near Valentine before he went home for the day.

Passing through the little town of Rushville, I saw two young children sitting by the curb with a lemonade stand (it was June) in front of a Victorian house.

Wanting to become a better writer-photographer, I saw them as a perfect subject for my personal stock photos files. But there was question of photo releases—could I get one? They were out in public, so I did not really need one, but some editors were fussy.

I kept going. Had to get to Valentine. But then I kicked myself (mentally) and kept kicking myself for the next forty miles;

Forget the perfect neo-Norman Rockwell photograph, what I should have done was stop and buy some lemonade!!

So I made a vow that I have more or less kept since then: when I see a lemonade stand, I stop and buy some, even if it is crappy lemonade made from a powdered mix.

At that time in Rushville, Lenore Skenazy had not yet popularized the term "Free-Range Kids," but buying lemonade is sort of reinforcing Free-Range behavior.

Where the West Begins — The Line is Moving

John Wesley Powell, 1834–1902 (Wikipedia)

Driving across the country, I like to play the game of "Where does the West begin?" (westbound) or "Where does the Midwest begin?" (eastbound).

For instance, on US 20 in Nebraska, Valentine is definitely in the West, but anything east of Ainsworth feels like the Midwest.

Driving west across South Dakota, the Missouri River makes an easy marker. From downtown Pierre, I see the dry hills to the west and feel at home. (It helps that I lived as a kid in western South Dakota.)

Another tradition is just to use the 100th meridian of longitude as the marker. John Wesley Powell, Civil War veteran and visionary Western geographer, made this one popular.  (In this New York Times article, the writer ventures among the natives along the 100th meridian.)

Some climate researchers, however, are now saying that the arid/wet boundary is shifting eastward. "Whither the 100th Meridian? The Once and Future Physical and Human Geography of America’s Arid–Humid Divide. Part I: The Story So Far" is an article published by the American Meteorological Society.

Its abstract (summary) states,

The aridity gradient [east and west of the 100th meridian] is realized in soil moisture and a west-to-east transition from shortgrass to tallgrass prairie. The gradient is sharp in terms of greater fractional coverage of developed land east of the 100th meridian than to the west. Farms are fewer but larger west of the meridian, reflective of lower land productivity. Wheat and corn cultivation preferentially occur west and east of the 100th meridian, respectively. The 100th meridian is a very real arid–humid divide in the physical climate and landscape, and this has exerted a powerful influence on human settlement and agricultural development.

This boundary has moved before. An archaeologist friend pointed out to me that in part of the Middle Archaic period (3000–1000 years ago), trees extended farther east onto the plains. Think of of the "pine ridge" country of the Palmer Divide (eastern Douglas and El Paso counties, Colorado) extending clear to Kansas! "Those were the good times," he mused.

Part II of the article makes this prediction for the 21st century:

It is first shown that state-of-the-art climate models from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project generally underestimate the degree of aridity of the United States and simulate an arid–humid divide that is too diffuse. These biases are traced to excessive precipitation and evapotranspiration and inadequate blocking of eastward moisture flux by the Pacific coastal ranges and Rockies. Bias-corrected future projections are developed that modify observationally based measures of aridity by the model-projected fractional changes in aridity. Aridity increases across the United States, and the aridity gradient weakens. The main contributor to the changes is rising potential evapotranspiration, while changes in precipitation working alone increase aridity across the southern and decrease across the northern United States. The “effective 100th meridian” moves to the east as the century progresses.

The Anderson Creek fire burned almost 400,000 acres in Oklahoma and Kansas in March 2016.

Back in the 1930s, the Dust Bowl ripped through the Southern Plains, as plowed land just blew away. So we stopped plowing so much, let it go back to vegetation, and now it's burning. In the long run, that is probably less destructive — more of a natural cycle —but a prairie fire is a scary thing.

In "Why is Oklahoma Burning,"  weather writer Bob Henson discusses the recent Rhea Fire, which burned more than 242,000 acres.

May 2015 was the state’s wettest single month on record, and 2015 was its wettest year. “The November-December 2015 period was the wettest on record as well, and the sixth warmest. So the growing season extended into winter to some extent that year,” said McManus. The result was an unusually lush landscape going into the first part of 2016 that dried out quickly in the weeks leading up to the Anderson Creek fire.

Likewise, the summers of 2016 and 2017 were on the moist side, said McManus. “We also had a pretty severe ice storm during January 2017 that left lots of big fuels on the ground waiting for that spark,” McManus said. Later that year came the the state’s second-wettest August on record. “August would normally be a time we'd get rid of some growth in our typical summer burn season,” said McManus.

The landscape of the Southern High Plains has been extraordinarily dry over the last six months. The western third of Oklahoma has seen little more than 2” since October—only about 20% of average—and most of the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles have received much less than 1”, making it the driest six months on record in some locations. Any moistening of the landscape has been all too brief, which has left the landscape highly vulnerable to a spell of fire-friendly weather.

Some good photos there too.

On the Road: Name That River (3)

No one is winning the fabulous invisible prize, so I will try one last time.

I wanted to photograph this river on my first traveling day (October 4th), but the weather was just too dismal. It was not so dismal on the way home, but still dismal in some respects.

*

*

*

*

I got a winner . . . on the Facebook feed. It's the Dismal River in the Nebraska Sandhills.

High Plains Aquifers, Crop Changes, and the 'Secret Government'

I posted recently about the galloping depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer ("We're on the last kick," he said. "The bulk water is gone").

Chad Love explains how modern agricultural methods also make it harder for the aquifer to recharge itself: "The Ogallala is Ogaleavin' "

Here in Colorado, agriculture traditionally takes about 80 percent of the water and municipalities 20 percent, but that balance is changing as farmers sell or lease water to cities. Consequence: A shift to dryland crops, just as will probably happen on the High Plains where groundwater has been going to corn crops for ethanol, feedlots, and hog barns.

John Orr at Coyote Gulch links to a Greeley Tribune story on how winter wheat is supplanting other thirstier crops.

Back on my last newspaper job, my beat included the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District. I always felt that "the water beat" was like being asked to cover the secret government — where decisions are made and court cases are fought that, years down the road, constrain what more visible government bodies can do.

Coyote Gulch is my go-to blog for secret-government news these days.

At First You Hate Your Hometown

I don't like my hometown. But I do love it, because it - in its own infuriating way - taught me the most important lesson in life: you haven't grown up until you care about someone else more than yourself.

David Frum reacts to The Little Way of Ruthie Leming by Rod Dreher.

Read the whole thing.

Training Wild Animals to Plant Trees — Or at Least to Deposit Them

Sorry, that is the best clever headline I could come up with. But the idea here is potentially quite clever, a field biologist's way to put animals to work planting trees in northwestern Nebraska.

First, you mix the seeds with something tasty . . .

Walking the Keystone Pipeline Route

This guy sets out to walk the length of the Keystone pipeline, starting in Alberta and going south, and makes a blog of it, Pipe Dreams.

It starts here, in September 2012.

Revisiting the "Buffalo Commons"

Back in the 1980s, two New Jersey professors raised a ruckus on the High Plains by arguing that, given falling populations and the gradual depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer, the plains should be given over to some combination of parks and a different, non-irrigated agriculture including buffalo ranching, activities that would support a smaller but sustainable population—a concept known as the Buffalo Commons.

Few people wanted to hear that. Not only was it coming from New Jersey professors who by definition could not know anything about anything, but it was a slap in the face to the whole survivor mythos of the High Plains—that the people there had survived grasshopper plagues, droughts, blizzards, the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, ups and downs in commodity prices, isolation, and indeed, a gradual decline from the "good years," the first two decades of the 20th century. In general, they reacted angrily to the proposal that they "surrender."

But population was falling:

Their continuing research showed that hundreds of counties in the American West still have less than a sparse 6 persons per square mile — the density standard Frederick Jackson Turner used to declare the American Frontier closed in 1893. Many have less than 2 persons per square mile.

The frontier never came close to disappearing, and in fact has expanded in the Plains in recent years. The 1980 Census showed 388 frontier counties west of the Mississippi. The 1990 Census shows 397 counties in frontier status, and the 2000 Census showed 402. Most of this frontier expansion is in the Great Plains. Kansas actually has more land in frontier status than it did in 1890.

My personal connection: in the early 1920s, the era of prosperity, my maternal grandparents as a young couple ran a store in the High Plains town of Arriba, Colorado (pr. "AIR-a-buh"). When I saw Arriba in the 1970s, it had no business district at all except a Flying J truck stop and an antiques store. Now there is a wind farm too. My grandparents got out before the collapse, but it caught up to them elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the professors, Frank and Deborah Popper, geographer and urban planner (yes, ironic) have not given up on the Buffalo Commons idea.

At a recent conference in Salina, Kansas, Frank Popper said, "We never really expected it to have the impact it did and does. We would have recoiled then that we would still be talking about it 23 years later. It's clear that in the intervening years a quiet muscle of reality, a lot of the trends we saw in the depopulation of the Plains has continued."

"I've been accused of having a slightly un-American approach to the land and the environment, where growth is not always the be-all and end-all, where growth can go too far, and the Buffalo Commons implies a quietism or defeatism," Frank Popper said. "Instead, the Buffalo Commons implies too much growth can be a mistake, overburdening the land, overmastering the environment and in the end always getting kicked in the rear or the pocketbook--or someplace else.

"I realize there is a social comedy in two people from back east who are telling people in the Plains what to do with their land. I've enjoyed it, but there are important things to look at in how we treat this vast, characteristically American chunk of land. There are lessons here on how to live on the land that can be applied to the Corn Belt, the lower Mississippi delta, and parts of our largest cities--like Detroit--that are depopulating like the Plains. It's about sustainability. It's about being American."

 Some politicians are quietly coming around, he notes, and a Great Plains National Park "may actually happen."

Cowboy Talk

Nebraska cowboy, 1886 (Library of Congress).

Ptak Science Books blog links to a 1937 interview of a 19th-century cowboy. The interview was part of the Works Progress Administration's oral history project, which interviewed many ordinary Americans about their life experiences. From L.M. Cox of Brownwood, Texas:

Cowboys lay awake nights trying to think of "good ones" to play on the tenderfoot. We tied an old cowboy to a tree once and told the tenderfoot that he was a madman, had spells and was very dangerous. At the appointed time the cowboy broke loose and the new comer made it to town, five miles on foot, in a very short time.

"Boiled beef and Arbuckle Coffee was our standby. The boys used to say if old man Arbuckle ever died they'd all be ruined and if it wasn't for Pecos water gravy and Arbuckle Coffee we would starve to death.

And the work:

"I have known cowboys to ride one hundred miles per day. I know this sounds unreasonable but they were off before daylight and rode hard until after dark. Their usual day's work was to be off as soon as they could see how to catch their horses, throw the round-up together around 10 o'clock then work cattle or brand until dark and often times stand guard one-third of the night after that.

No wonder many cowboys were ready to look for easier work once out of their twenties.

Or you can just read the memoirs of E.C. "Teddy Blue" Abbott, who started cowboying in the 1870s. His book We Pointed Them North is available from the usual sources.

All that open-range stuff lasted just one generation, and by the 1890s late-middle-aged stockmen were getting all nostalgic about it, hence the Cheyenne Frontier Days, etc. etc. etc.

Places Where You Can See the Stars

An interactive map of locations with dark enough skies to really see the stars. Another reason to appreciate the Sand Hills of Nebraska.

Self-Advertisement in the Nebraska Sandhills

The faint type reads "Best Cow Country in the World."

A photo from Nebraska Highway 2 in the Sandhills. I had not realized that CBS News' Charles Kuralt once called Highway 2 "one of America's 10 most beautiful highways."

He was right. Highway 2 is to the prairie what California 1 is to the Pacific Coast.

Only instead of a sports car or motorcycle you want a big crew-cab pickup truck, full of BNSF railroad workers out to the job site on the double-tracking project near Mullen.

The empty road curves gently, the hills roll away, the native prairie grasses ripple in the wind.  Everyone talks about "climax forest," but the Sandhills (map here) are one of few places were you can still see huge pieces of "climax prairie." (They just lack buffalo in large numbers.)

Yet the Sandhills are best comprehended from the air. Then you can see that unlike typical uplifted and/or eroded hills, they actually are sand dunes. They line up in rows, as though placed sequentially by a gigantic dump truck.

This must have been awfully raw country when the ice had just melted and the winds blew off the Rockies and the grasses had not yet covered and softened the dunes.