After the unerringly flat journey across eastern Nebraska, the far west comes as a refreshing change. In the
Panhandle
, as it's often called, wave upon wave of rumpled sandy hills, thinly coated with prairie grass, back off toward the horizon like a sea in constant turmoil. Early pioneers wrote the area off as unproductive, and it remained barren until massive irrigation work at the start of the twentieth century enabled agricultural settlement. In the northwest the sand hills yield to classic John Ford-style Western scenery: pancake-flat valleys, crisscrossed by dry meandering riverbeds and corraled by crusty, contorted bluffs under the constant shadow of fast-moving clouds. Emigrants on the
Oregon Trail
used the bizarre outcrops which sprout along the way as "road signs" as a way of knowing that their trek across the plains was coming to an end.
Copyright Rough Guides Ltd as trustee for its authors. Published by Rough Guides. All rights reserved. The Rough Guides name is a trademark of Rough Guides Ltd.
Copyright © 2006 United States.biz
