1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die (76 page)

“Anyone can sit back at the seashore and be inspired, because it shouts at you,” said Father Val Peters, the most recent director of Boys Town in Omaha. “But the prairie only whispers. You must listen closely and not miss the message.”

W
HERE
: from North Platte in the south (225 miles west of Lincoln) to Valentine in the north and as far west as Alliance.
S
ANDHILLS
J
OURNEY
S
CENIC
B
YWAY
:
www.byways.org
.
V
ALENTINE
W
ILDLIFE
R
EFUGE
: Tel 402–376-3789;
www.fws.gov/valentine
.
B
EST TIMES
: spring and fall to see the duck migrations.

A Town Devoted to an Author

Red Cloud, Nebraska

One of the most famous novelists of the early 20th century, Willa Cather wrote of the richness and hardships of prairie life in the 1880s, a time still exemplified by her hometown and muse, Red Cloud. Surrounded by
a grand sweep of plains and prairie farms, Red Cloud (named for the Oglala Sioux chief) is said to be immortalized in more books than any other small town in literature. Though she called it by other names—Black Hawk was one—it’s easy to see through the thinly veiled guises of the sites she wrote about with such familiarity and love.

Cather was born in Virginia in 1873, but her family moved here to Webster County when she was nine. After 18 months on the prairie they moved into Red Cloud, where they lived for six years before Cather left for college in Lincoln. Her life in Nebraska inspired her best work, including
My Antonia
(1918), about an urban Czech family’s tragic collision with farming in the New World. In fact, six of her dozen novels (including the Pulitzer Prize–winning
One of Ours
) are set in Red Cloud and Webster County and celebrate the men and women who settled on the Great Plains at the end of the 19th century. The citizens of Red Cloud began to preserve and restore the most important Cather landmarks back in the 1950s, not long after her death in 1947 (she is buried in New Hampshire). In
all, more than 190 sites make up what is possibly the largest historic district dedicated to an author in the U.S.

Today the Cather Foundation gives guided tours of seven historic buildings, starting with the 1885 Opera House, where Cather appeared in a student production of
Beauty and the Beast,
gave her high school commencement address, and even scrawled her name on a preserved piece of the wall. The high point of the tour is her childhood home, complete with original furnishings that include the family Bible, in which she altered her birth date.

Other stops include the St. Juliana Falconieri Catholic Church, where Antonia’s baby was baptized, and the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank, now a museum that houses artifacts such as the Turkish doll described in
O Pioneers!
and Cather’s writing desk.

When Cather left for New York City, her parents purchased a grand Queen Anne home. Its current owners have converted it into Cather’s Retreat B&B. Request the room that Willa’s parents kept for her when she came to visit.

The Cather Foundation can arrange 60-mile Country Tours, with stops that include the Pavelka farmstead, the setting for the title character’s home in
My Antonia.

W
HERE
: 145 miles southwest of Lincoln.
C
ATHER
F
OUNDATION
: Tel 866–731-7304 or 402–746-2653;
www.willacather.org
.
When:
closed Sun in winter. Country tours by special arrangement.
Cost:
tours $10; country tours from $65.
C
ATHER’S
R
ETREAT
B&B
: Tel 402–746-2599;
www.cathersretreat.com
.
Cost:
from $65.
B
EST TIMES
: May or June for the Willa Cather Spring Conference; 1st weekend of Dec for Cather’s birthday.

A Unique Convergence of Six Ecosystems

Valentine, Nebraska

For a 76-mile stretch between Valentine and Highway 137, the Niobrara is designated a National Scenic River; six distinct ecosystems meet here, offering up some of the country’s best canoeing amid the beauty of
America’s heartland. The Niobrara is at its most dramatic at this ecological crossroads, with the steepest canyons, the tallest cliffs, and lots of pretty waterfalls.

The Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world’s largest sources of underground water, runs right up against bedrock here, carving out a highly unusual plains landscape over the millennia. The ponderosa pine, paper birch, and quaking aspen of the Rocky Mountains meet the oak and box elder of eastern forests. There are unusual northern boreal plants, as well as three prairie ecosystems—eastern tall grass, western short grass, and the mixed grass prairie of the Sandhills (see p. 634). You won’t find a combination like this anywhere else.

Fed by abundant springs, the Niobrara is a cool, clear river that flows at 2 or 3 miles per hour—fast enough for rafters to have plenty of fun without tipping into the brink. In the summer it turns into a party river as the young people of Lincoln and Omaha escape the heat by floating the Niobrara on oversize inner tubes with six-packs of beer.

You can camp at Smith Falls State Park, with a 63-foot waterfall Nebraska is proud to call its highest. If you’re not the camping kind, Heartland Elk Guest Ranch has comfy
new 800-square-foot cabins that are the perfect place to regain your land legs.

Any trip on the Niobrara starts in Valentine. With its population of 2,744, it’s the teeming megalopolis of sparsely populated Cherry County. Named for a popular Nebraska congressman from the 1880s, Valentine now makes the most of its name (getting hitched in town on February 14 is quite the thing) and invites people to send valentines in an outer envelope to Postmaster, P.O. Box 9998, Valentine, NE 69201, so they can be postmarked from Valentine.

Valentine is a cow town at heart, though, proclaimed loud and clear at the annual Heart City Bull Bash every February. Sixty pens of prize bull flesh take over Main Street, and breeders and buyers brave the chilly weather to make deals while everyone else enjoys food and family fun indoors. In October, cowboys show their sensitive side at the Annual Nebraska Cowboy Poetry Gathering & Old West Days.

Just north of Valentine is the Rosebud Reservation, an 880,000-acre home to 18,000 members of the Sicangu Lakota tribe, across the state line in South Dakota. It has
wacipis
(or powwows) that the public is invited to attend, as well as hunting, fishing, and—for the real risk-takers—gambling.

W
HERE
: 130 miles south of Pierre, SD.
River info:
Tel 402–336-3970;
www.nps.gov/niob
.
Valentine visitors info:
Tel 800–658-4024 or 402–376-2969;
www.heartcity.com
.
S
MITH
F
ALLS
S
TATE
P
ARK
: Tel 402–376-1306;
www.ngpc.state.ne.us/parks
.
H
EARTLAND
E
LK
G
UEST
R
ANCH
: Sparks. Tel 402–376-1124;
www.heartlandelk.com
.
Cost:
cabins from $119.
R
OSEBUD
R
ESERVATION
: Tel 605–856-5644;
www.tradecorridor.com/rosebud/rosebud.htm
.
B
EST TIMES
: 1st Sat before Valentine’s Day for the Heart City Bull Bash; May and Sept–Oct for floating the Niobrara; summer for Rosebud Reservation powwows; early Oct for Old West Days.

Building Your Life List in the Prairie Potholes

N
orth
D
akota

North Dakota is one of the nation’s great birding destinations, if one of its least frequented. Dedicated birders can count more than 300 reasons to visit the state: sandhill cranes, Nelson’s sharptail sparrows, American
white pelicans, chestnut collared longspurs, marbled godwits, upland sandpipers, and Wilson’s phalaropes among them. Because of the distances between the best sites, an organization called Birding Drives Dakota has worked with professional biologists, ornithologists, and some of the state’s 62 national wildlife refuges (NWRs) to create nine “birding drives.”

All are located in the central portion of the state, in and around Kidder, Stutsman, and Foster counties. With a total human population of only about 2,750—about two per square
mile—Kidder County is the essence of rural prairie land, with four NWRs. Long Lake NWR is a breeding and migratory stopover for more than 20,000 shorebirds. Thousands of sandhill cranes also stage here each spring and fall, and the endangered whooping crane can be seen occasionally as well. Visitors who come for Jamestown’s Potholes & Prairie Birding Festival in early June might be treated to the intricate courtship dances of Clark’s and western grebes, in addition to a diverse menu of prairie sparrows. The 4,385-acre Chase Lake NWR in Stutsman County is known as a nesting spot for gulls, cormorants, and the largest colony of white pelicans in North America.

You can see sharp-tailed grouse and many other species along the nine birding drives.

If you need a break from the binoculars, check out some of the area’s unique sculptures, such as the
World’s Largest Sandhill Crane;
at 38 feet tall, it towers over the prairie outside of Steele. In Jamestown, the
World’s Largest Concrete Buffalo
weighs 60 tons and stands 26 feet tall and 46 feet long. And “Salem Sue,” the
World’s Largest Holstein Cow,
stands atop a hill at I-94’s exit 127. Farther west, along the Enchanted Highway, between Gladstone and Regent, local artists are erecting the biggest collection of large metal animal sculptures in the world: giant pheasants, deer, and grasshoppers.

W
HERE
: Steele is 40 miles east of Bismarck. Tel 888–921-2473 or 701–952-5871;
www.birdingdrives.com
.
L
ONG
L
AKE
: Moffit. Tel 701–387-4397;
http://longlake.fws.gov
.
C
HASE
L
AKE
: Woodworth. Tel 701–752-4218;
http://chaselake.fws.gov
.
B
EST TIMES
: early June for the 3-day Potholes & Prairie Birding Festival in Jamestown (
www.birdingdrives.com
); Apr–May and Oct–mid-Nov, when both migratory birds and native species can be seen.

Celebrating the Culture of America’s First Peoples

Bismarck, North Dakota

The term “powwow” originated in the Narragansett Algonquin language, where it meant a healing ceremony attended by medicine men. It was first spread across the continent by white Americans who thought it meant
any large gathering or council, and was later adopted by the country’s diverse Native tribes. The first modern powwows, in which Native Americans come together to celebrate their heritage in music, dance, prayer, and celebration, were organized in the 1920s, but the movement didn’t gain full momentum until the Native American cultural renaissance of the late 1960s and early ’70s. Today more than 300 powwows are held annually, nationwide.

In North Dakota, which is home to more than a dozen powwows each summer, the United Tribes International Powwow is the heavyweight champ. Held annually since 1969, it typically attracts 1,000 dancers and drum groups from many tribes, as well as performers demonstrating the indigenous music and dance of other cultures—such as Andean, Hawaiian, Aztec, and Atka Alaskan—for more than 15,000 visitors.

Native Americans of all ages compete in 22 dance categories, including Traditional, Buckskin, Straight Dance, and Chicken Dance.

The competitors’ regalia, made from both traditional and modern materials, attract as
much attention as their moves, and are tailored to each dance. For example, participants in grass dances wear yards of trailing ribbon or yarn, symbolizing prairie grass, and the clothing of jingle dancers is covered with small metal cones that make music as they move. Traditional dancers incorporate feathers and beadwork into their costumes, with their dances mimicking the movements of animals or acting out the hunt. Fancy dress features neon-colored feathers, beads, and other elements that accentuate this energetic dance, which has its origins in the preparation for battle.