The eccentric, untamed Nebraska

North Platte River

Before we reach Nebraska, we have to talk about the green.

Colorado’s northeast quadrants seems like its grasses should always look burnt and brown. From Raton Pass to the Wyoming border, Colorado seems a far greener country than at any point I’ve lived here. That’s a limited sample size, I admit, but the state grapples with a generational drought. Green grasses and ample watering holes just don’t happen every spring, let alone every summer.

Colorado’s Front Range and Plains have been inundated with snow then rain as spring slid into summer. Fields and rolling hills I only knew as brown and dry were reborn in shades of green the moment we left Fort Morgan and spilled into the endless rolls of the Pawnee National Grasslands. 

Everywhere long-dormant yucca sprouted their trademark stalks of flowers that draw pollinators across the plains. The Pawnee Buttes and the Chalk Bluffs rose above the verdant plain while pronghorns and mule deer grazed. Into Nebraska we drove and the green did not stop as we passed through Kimball, billed as the state’s highest town. 

Then the green land broke from its mellow roll and rose into the craggy ridge of the Wildcat Hills, the first sign that Nebraska’s wild western quadrant has arrived. Over the short rise, the twin cities of Gehring and Scottsbluff bustle beneath with the buttes and mesas of Scotts Bluff National Monument. It doesn’t resemble Colorado or the Black Hills, it’s just the Nebraska Panhandle, with its singular look.

The national monument

 When the first white travelers notes Scotts Bluff, they assumed it was Nebraska’s tallest point, as it stood some 800 feet above the North Platte River, and Nebraska lacks the soaring peaks of its western neighbors. Panorama Peak, a marker in a field on private property near Nebraska’s borders with Colorado and Wyoming, sits some 400 feet taller. Ask which one sticks better in the mind, and there’s no question. I saw Scotts Bluff in a traveled book, and it transfixed me, with crumbling rock and post high above the plains. 

The Nebraska Panhandle gets its travelers, but not in the volumes that swarm to Colorado or Wyoming’s scenic spots. I had a chance for my friend Tim to join on the camping trip, and I was glad I could show someone else western Nebraska. 

The heat was already upon us in the early afternoon. If the giant banks of clouds brought rain or not, relief might not follow anyway. Scottsbluff sprawls a bit, and first we tried Scotty’s,, a local fast food joint whose drive-thru line nearly reached the street. We decided to try our luck on Broadway, its main north-south route, which has patches of success amid empty storefronts. 

We ducked into Flyover Brewing Company, western Nebraska’s first brewery. The taproom was a full restaurant with a crowded lunchtime patio. We chose indoors Flyover provided the boost that a craft brewery should to a small town.

Its taproom served as a gathering space for both locals and highway travelers, which ran thick in the post-pandemic summer. The food was excellent. I had a brisket sandwich and a saison made with wine grape must. I grabbed a range of Flyover brews to bring home, including a crowler of the saison, their Nebraska Pale Ale and a bourbon-barrel barley wine.

 After lunch, Tim and I wandered up and down Broadway. For a relatively young town (although Native history goes back thousands of years, and the overland trails came in the 1840s, the town was founded 1899 by the railroad).

Scottsbluff has the same sturdy western look of most small towns in Colorado. A massive railyard lies north of the river, and the geometry of modern farms. Suburban sprawl likely plucked away some business that would have kept downtown full occupied at one time.

The tallest building in downtown, the Hotel Lincoln, had been converted into the Lincoln House apartments, a faded advertisement for the hotel on its red-brick exterior. A newspaper office anchored one end of the commercial block. The Midwest Theatre no longer hosted movies but its mid-20th century look still brightened up Broadway. The region hosted a vintage car show that weekend, and Tim snapped some photos with 1950s cars on Broadway in front of the theater that looked like images of 60 years ago.

In both Gehring and Scottsbluff, the empty spaces were hard to miss, although the towns still felt relatively healthy. The twin cities formed the hub of western Nebraska commerce, recreation and tourism, plus a large slice of Nebraska's big sky.