Odysseus Abroad: Bingham, Nebraska

Alliance - Antioch - Bingham - Hyannis - Broken Bow - Stickley - Fairbury

Ogallala fed lake in Sandhills, Nebraska

My last real visit to Nebraska was in the summer of 1994 exploring the great western sandhills and the center of the country. A few years later I did a few short trips, mainly to Lincoln NE in order to sit exams for the Engineer-in-Training and Professional Engineering certification. The xenophobes at University of Kansas Lawrence would not accept my British 1st Class Honors Bachelors Degree, so I applied instead for licensure in welcoming Nebraska, a license still valid today. Returning from a wonderful motorbike trip to Yellowstone, Wyoming, crossing through Nebraska that summer, I arrived first at Scottsbluff, staying overnight. Cruising slowly into town a local biker with an identical purple, pink and black Honda CBR 600 pulled up next to me with a girl on back, daring me for a race. This was common on many long distance trips, to be challenged by local to race, but I never partook, nor understood the practice. The wind was so strong in Wyoming that my tires were worn unevenly on the left side due to the leaning, and a slow leak in the rear which needed daily air fill-up at the gas station. With no tang gauge, mileage for fuel tracking and high fuel rate due to the speed I would full the gas tank regularly to avoid going dry in such remote lands. Wyoming had eliminated speed limits not long before, but re-imposed them reluctantly by my visit, but rarely enforced them, so it was not unusual for me to cruise at 120 MPH in the wide pen stretches. Fatefully, a bike shop at Scottsbluff fixed my slow puncture in the rear tire. Their method I would learn later was to drill out the tubeless tire from outside at the point of the leak and force in a plus in form of sticky rope. Out of Scottsbluff heading east through the beautiful rolling sandhills I chose the remotest Route 2 out of Alliance. Under blue skies with a warming morning sun, I had the road to myself cruising around 120MPH on the free sections between Antioch, Lakeside and Ellsworth. Rounding a slight righthand curve just before Bingham, I felt the back end of the bike drifting, so I let off the throttle and let it coast down on the straight to stop on the narrow hard shoulder. The plus had blown out and deflated immediately, the back tire was flat. New rule, a slow puncture is much better than a external plus as a fix, I was very lucky not to have lost control and crashed. Now I had no way to go forward, but hitch a lift to the next town with services, Hyannis some fifteen miles to the east. A nice local young college couple gave be a drive there, but I found that the Sinclair service station there had no repair supplies. With no way to fix the flat in such a remote area, instead I would leave the bike at a farm nearby, hitch a lift back to Kansas City and return the next weekend with a U-Haul trailer to get the bike home. The return trip to Bingham was in an old mini camper van driven by a bearded preacher who was moving to west Nebraska to minister at a rural parish. He dropped me at the entrance to a farm on the north side of the road and railway tracks near the bike. Walking the long driveway, I diverted by the house to the large barn where a few old guys were working on some farm machinery. The farm, so remote, was equipped with everything they needed to survive, and the farmer guided me to a box of tire repair kit and tools to try a repair. Returning to the bike with some kit and a can for tire inflation I was successful in getting the repair and enough inflation to drive. Returning the kit to the farm, slipping a $20 note in the box for some beers, thinking them for the help and I was on my way, slowly due to the low inflation. Back in Hyannis I had a weird experience, after filling the tank with Gas, and pulling the air hose from the wall to fill the tire, the hose reel was pulled back through the wall and would not extend. Someone clearly did not want me to get air, the hose reel was locked in place upon inspection after walking around back through the garage doors, no-one in sight and it the middle of the day. I drove on to Mullen to air up and continued on home, lucky and happy to complete the trip, and with a new set of tires continued my biking trips.

Thirty years later, after a hiking and family trip to Colorado, I decided to return and retrace my earlier adventure, plus explore the sandhills a bit further, something cut short due to the puncture years prior. Coming out of Cheyenne the night before, where the town was all a buzz with "Frontier Days" festival, I drove through La Grange and the white chalk bluffs into Scottsbluff in the morning sun. What grass and crops that existed on the arid lands were arranged in massive circles irrigated from the Ogallala aquafer deep below, the west being some 5000 feet above sea level. Nebraska is essentially a ramp sloping down to the east at around 1000 feet. Arriving in Alliance past the car graveyards only found on the high plains, I visited Car-Henge, a wonderful circle of old card from the fifties to sixties stood upright in a circle, much like that of our Celtic ancestors. Heading west out of Alliance and half way to Antioch the landscape changed from irrigated circle fields to sand dunes covered with grass and interspersed with lakes. I was entering the largest expanse of sand dunes, now stabilized by grass, in the western hemisphere. Only after the last ice age 15 k years ago were these sands moved from the wash of the retreating glaciers to the east, collecting as the elevation and winds declined enough. In dry times, even as recently as a thousand years ago, these dunes become active and move around, but for most of the last 10 K years, they have been stabilized by thin grasses.

Stopping near Antioch at the ruins of concrete towers and foundations on the north side of the road, I witnessed the remans of the potash works operating there during world war one. Most people take food production for granted, but the reality is very fragile, with half of the nitrogen necessary to feed the world coming from human intervention (ammonia from fossil fuel) and much potassium. During world world war one, our the source of European potash stopped, leaving the USA in a bind. Two Nebraska chemistry grads developed a process to retrieve potassium from the alkaline lake waters of the sandhills, and processing facilities were installed around Antioch, driving it's population to 2000 people. Solid concrete towers, structures and foundations are scattered across the grassland a reminder of the production which ceased in 1921.

Entering the sandhills proper reveals a haunting landscape, not a person in sight for miles, cattle few and far between, allowing space for a diverse range of grasses and flowers, plus protection for migrating and local birds and waterfowl, marking the Nebraska Sandhills as a unique natural region. Such is the wind of western Nebraska, the same winds which originally spread the sands from the foot on the Rockies eastward, dropping them in here after the last ice age, that it also powers the old style tin windmills, pulling water from the ground filling low round tanks for watering the cattle. These mills are lower than typical in the Midwest as the wind is good and water high. In many places the water troughs are hardly needed, water of the aquifer reaching surface freely, forming thousands of lakes in the "sabkhas" between the original dunes, now stabilized by grass. A view from space of Nebraska sandhills would look very much like the active sand dunes of the empty quarter of Saudi Arabia, and some in Abu Dhabi which I used to visit in the mid 1990's. Between the large active dunes there stood flats, called Sabkha's which were dry of aquifer, but would flood and become march in the winter rains, carrying hardy plants and shrubs. Back in western Nebraska among the dunes stand continuous lakes fed by the Ogallala aquifer flowing beneath at a foot per day eastwards. There are no rivers there. but hydraulic equilibrium with the subterranean water bank keeps the lake waters fresh and salt at bay.

Taking local road 250 north from Lakeside the true beauty of the isolated windswept grasslands of the gentle dunes came into view. On the west side of the road stretched lush lowlands interspersed with lakes: Snow Lake, Nye Lake, Joy Lake, Diamond Lake, Twin Lakes, each supporting thriving ecosystems, lined with bulrushes protecting nesting grounds. Flocks of trumpeter swans, ducks and cranes settled on the water while bald eagles soared overhead rising the air uplifted over the dunes. On land in the sandhills is the home of the Great Prairie Chicken, which I was not fortunate enough to witness. Each spring the males put on an elaborate display of their feathers and orange air balloon to impress prospective females for mating. Back on the road heading east, stopping at Morgan's Cowpoke Haven in the village of Ellsworth, I found a gem of store selling western gear, ranching goods, leather gear and guns run by local Wade Morgan. Apparently the store was originally setup by Bartlett Richards, who used it to service the massive Spade Ranch from the rail supply line at Ellsworth. In these remote isolated lands, Richards had succeeded with likely the largest illegal land grab in history, some 6 million acres upon which he ran 350 thousand cattle. In a common misalignment among local, state and federal government, he was fined a pittance and 6 hours in confinement, which he did at a private club. Greed supported with corruption. He died serving a year in prison on follow-up Federal charges. Expansion of the west was always a a battle between wealthy power and control versus the rights of the common man to homestead on a reasonable allotment, 160 acres typically or 640 acres on rangeland like the sandhills. This concept was high on Lincoln's mind when faced with wealthy slave owners getting hold of the west and he quoted Nebraska as a potential slave state under the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 “a violence…it was conceived in violence, passed in violence, is maintained in violence, and is being executed in violence”. He wanted opportunity for the common people to develop the lands, not the uber wealthy, he'd be considered a Democrat today in terms of his platform. Back at Morgan's the image of John Wayne and Trump rule, with some three quarters of voters supporting Trump in the county, and Nebraska consistently supporting Republicans mostly since Lincoln, but for a few cases. In the mean time, the party has changed platforms significantly and continues to do so. for the last fifty years Republican represented three main constituents, the Military, Business and Christianity, non of whom had been on conflict with each other, while the Democrats have a much more complicated and confusing set of stakeholders to bring along. Still, there is a large plurality, up to a third, who do vote Democrat in the Sandhill's, not that I came across any of them, they hide well. While the Republican platform is gone and replaced by Trumpism, the only constituent left intact in the party are the Christians, the Military cast aside by Tuberville, love of Putin and isolationism, businesses set aside by tariffs and culture wars, like Disney in Florida, where diversity, equality and inclusiveness has been replaced by discrimination, exclusivity and inequality. While farmers were hit by Trump tariffs, they also benefitted by a tripling of farm subsidies under Trump, although the subsidies are not broad, going mainly to wealthy farmers. In the Sandhills, the reality is that none of this politics really matters or has an impact to daily life - with plenty of water and rich natural grass lands, ranchers don't get government subsidies here like the crop landers, and ranches operate as independent fiefdoms with little need for external inputs but for fuel, another reason they support Republicans fossil fuel agenda. Just a week after my trip Tim Walz was chosen as nominee for Democrat VP 2024, an appropriate pick, having been brought up in rural eastern Nebraska and taught at a school in Alliance, from where I started my tour of Route 2. While the wind seems to always blow, and there are small water pumps throughout, there are no modern electric power generating wind farms located there. Poor soil, uneven hills and distance from the user grid probably explains that, but also some resistance as evident by anti-wind posters in some villages, usually near fossil fuel stations.

The late 19th century rail road was critical to siting the Ellsworth and supply to the famous Spade Ranch and the Sandhills. Two rail lines still traverse the Sandhills east-west run by Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) along the north side of Route 2. Coal from Wyoming heading east to power plants near population centers are a regular sight. Incidentally I heard a radio report on the way that a 17 year old boy tampered with a switch causing derailment of a coal freight train earlier in the year. I continued east toward Bingham, Nebraska and found the location where I had the tire blowout back in 1994 just before the tiny town. Lucky not to have been injured or killed by accident back then when my tire blow out, or of any number of risks in the intervening years, I was now back thirty years later to view the site, the years between seem to have gone in a breath. The farmstead who helped me get air back in the tire and on my way home stood across the rail lines to the northeast up a long driveway, the metal barn still standing. I would have visited the house, but no-one was home. I drove east the fifteen miles to Hyannis, the town I visited for help and the Sinclair gas station where I was refused air for the bike. Someone said to me recently that people are generally good and helpful in the country, not so in the cities, to which I objected in my deep and long experience of both - there are good and helpful people, plus horrid people everywhere, in cities and in the countryside, as I experiences there in the Sandhills thirty years prior. South of where my bike took a flat tire stands the grand Powles Ranch, run for decades by Don Powles who breed a black version of the golden Gelbvieh by crossing with Angus. Bingham nearby is a tiny remnant of a town, with unpaved roads barely noticeable from the road but for a few old buses and cars lining a single house on Wilson Road.

Leaving the sandhills a river finally started to form, the Middle Loup River and as the hills subsided to flat lands, the crops emerged, dominated by corn in and area well irrigated by the Ogallala Aquifer, and one of the few areas where the refill rates exceed usage. There are few roads through the sandhills, which protest it's natural state, but back on the flatlands, the familiar one mile by one mile unpaved road network took hold. Old cars and farm equipment are strewn across the western high plains of Nebraska, one of my favorite parts, often well preserved in the dry air, located in scrap years, back yards or in the fields. My first car in US was a 1976 Plymouth Fury which I bought in 1989 from Steve Minor of Melrose Massachusetts for $300 and drive some 25,000 miles over 9 months before scrapping it for a car with better gas mileage, Renault Alliance, to do a 10,000 mile tour across the country the summer of 1990. There in the Nebraska Sandhills I found a perfect version of the car, gold rather than green, but the same car. Staying overnight in Broken Bow, named for an arrow found at a native camp where the town was founded, I witnessed the annual festival. Among the many classic cars paraded was a 1957 Chevrolet which I had seen earlier that day 100 miles to the west in Hyannis at the Sinclair Gas Station mentioned earlier. A little antique store there contained all the artifacts from a hundred years of farmsteads on the central plains. I bought an old car jack, a tube radio and a wind up telephone. Along the road east the memory of Borglum brothers of Danish Mormon descent who lived briefly in the Mud Creek valley and other parts of Nebraska. They were famous for sculpture and art work, one brother carving at Mt Rushmore and the other on westers sculpted scenes.

Cutting south from Cairo through Wood River, across the wide natural flowing Platte River, I cut a path southeast on back roads and unpaved roads toward Marysville Kansas. Along the way on a remote stretch of unpaved road I came across the Stockholm Cemetery and Swedish Church between Ong and Stickley. It is a lonely isolated memory on the high plains of the Swedish immigrants arriving in the area in the 1870's. They raised $3550 in 1900 to replace the small church with the current. Sunday at noon on my visit there was not a person in sight for miles around, only the wind rustling the corn stalks and red cedar trees surrounding the cemetery full of Nordic 'sons and 'sens. Morris Manson born November 12th 1846 somewhere in Sweden married Natalie who was a year older than him and they immigrated to the area in their mid 20's. Natalie died July 1st 1876 and thereafter Morris married Betsey, ten years his junior and with whom he had a daughter, Nelse in 1878. Betsey dies sixteen years later and Morris lives on March 1930, dying just six months before his daughter, such is the cycle of life and struggles of an immigrant family as recorded on the stones of the Stockholm Cemetery. Today the sons and sens are spread throughout the local community which overwhelmingly subscribes to anti-immigrant cult of Trump as evident by the many signs one finds along the roads and in the fields of central Nebraska. Testing my new metal detector I was able to find only a rifle cartridge in the grass near the cemetery.

Having crossed the state, not is the southeast visited Fairbury before crossing over to Kansas. With a well preserved town center set around a large square for the Jefferson Country hall. A two volume picture book bore witness to over a century of the town's history, probably similar to many midwestern towns, serving an agricultural community with autos and farm equipment, advancing from steam engines to oil and gas, developing a county center for shopping. An anchor for the town was the Rock Island Rail Depot which served ad a control center for the western line. Even while the car took over the rail continued to advance passenger rail from steam engines to the diesel rock island rocket, before finally giving way in the 1960's. A few sowing companies in the area were consolidated into Swingster, a famous garment company still operating to this day and succeeding in certain products, like USA flags, against foreign competition. A museum is now present in the old Rock Island depot building run by local volunteers, one of whom, a retired truck driver, gave me a history of the town and rail. One story recorded there was about a toddler on the tracks who was swept to the side by a steam engine engineer who bravely climbed down on the front cattle ramp, risking his life, and indeed he was dragged along the tracks a bit before he could free himself and survived.

Accompanying my jaunt across Nebraska on Sunday was a sermon, lecture or rant of sorts by the swaggering Jimmy Swaggart who softened rural Nebraskans with a long story about his upbringing from poverty in Louisiana to how his mother and father were found to Jesus, born agaon and on to his career. He skipped over the prostitutes to get steam up for a lecture of fearmongered in abortion, immigration and gays before pushing for his audience to vote for Donald Trump at the upcoming election. He railed at the portrayal of Michael Angelo's Last Supper at the opening of the Olympics by a bunch of "queers" (his words), which is a bit ironic when considering that Michael Angelo was likely gay, as are many artists and the Last Supper itself could be seen as a little gay. The religious really seem to love their sinners, both, and rural Nebraska is peppered with signs for the cult of Jesus and Trump. After a great revisit of Nebraska Route 2 I slipped back into Kansas near Marysville and back to Kansas City, Missouri.

Auto Graveyard, Alliance NE

Early Road Grader, Alliance NE

Plymouth Fury (my 1st car is US), Alliance NE

Car Henge, Alliance NE

Potash works (WW1) Antioch

BNSF Line through Sandhills, NE

Wind water pump in sandhills

Lakes of Sandhills, NE

Lake in Sandhills, NE

Waterfowl, Sandhills, NE

Sign at 183rd Trail

Ducks on natural lake, Sandhills

The Powles Ranch

Beem Lake near Hyannis

Bird on a twig

Win Water Pumper of the hills

Windmill Graveyard, Nebraska

1957 Chevy at festival at Broke Bow

Empty Main Stret, Ansley NE

Burlington Northern Santa Fe line, NE

Windmill or the hills

Ogallala water irrigation, Nebraska

Cattle Feed Lot, Nebraska

Platt River, Wood River, NE

Water leakage on irrigator, Ogallala aquifer

Crop irrigation east of Sandhills

Swedish Chursh, Stockholm Cemetery, Stickley NE

Swedish Cemetery

Stockholm Cemetery

Fairbury Rail Depot & Museum, NE

Fairbury Depot rail control pannel

Saloon & Hardware at Fairbury, NE

Lola Y Manuel at Wallace, Kansas

Welcome to Nebraska

Snclair Gas Station, Hyannis NE (no air!)

Farmstead at Bingham

Storm front sweeps the plains

The week prior Nebraska was spent with family at a house rented in Dillon, Colorado, near the Loveland high mountain pass. Hiked Gray's peak, Mt Elbert and Mt Sherman over three days during the week, plus explored old stomping grounds of Leadville. The Climax Molybdenum which I have observed for many years has expended in the past decade significantly, the largest such mine in the world. Leaving the area I passed through the heights of Rocky Mountain National Park, a wonderfully scenic drive (slow and restricted without an online reservation to after 2pm).