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Title
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Scottsbluff Narratives, 1936_028
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Alternative Title
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1936 Scottsbluff Narratives
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Date
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1936
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Creator
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Frank Shoemaker
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Description
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Frank Shoemaker - Sandhills Narratives
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Identifier
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321301
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Transcription
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1 June 23, 1936 Left Scottsbluff at 1:15 M.T. p.m., by bus for Alliance, 55 miles east. Had a delightful visit there with Miss Graham and Mr. When - they were very appreciative of the hundred-odd recent photographs which I have taken. The country east of Alliance being sparsely settled, there is no bus service; no I tried various ways suggested by Miss Graham, to catch a ride on a truck. None of them worked out; truck had left at 9 a.m.; another truck will go day after tomorrow; so if I cared to wait . . ? I didn't. So finally, at 6 p.m., I got a taxi to take me eight miles east, to the Grant County line. Alliance lies in definitely plains country - the buffalo-grams-grass ("short-grass") country. It almost seems as though the sandhill "long-grass") country had respected the artificial county line; for a mile into Grant, the true sandhillls starting with the long "hay" grasses instead of the short "grazing" grasses of the Great Plains. Highway #2 runs from Lincoln to Alliance and beyond. Its nickname is "The Potash Highway," for reasons to be developed later. I had driven it perhaps a dozen times, but always with a definite objective and a time limit; which means, being interpreted, that I didn't know a darned thing, intimately, about the country traversed. In a car, at an average of 50, one gets mere impressions - it is absurd to claim that one "knows" a country so traversed. So this little adventure of mine - say 25% "official" and 75% information - is undertaken to give me a real knowledge of this part of the Nebraska sandhills. It is, basically, a grazing and hay country, which must be handled with the utmost circumspection - for over-grazing will result in surface breaks, the vegetative community is destroyed - the prevailing winds from the northeast catch and hurry away the loose sand - resulting presently in a semi-desert condition, with "blowouts" and endless sand-drifts. - Properly handled, the 18,000 or 20,000 square miles of Nebraska sandhills will be a grazing asset of incalculable value; but even the least bobble of
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Rights
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To inquire about usage, please contact Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. These images are for educational use only. Not all images are available for publication.
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Is Version Of
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frank_h_shoemaker_321301-03776.jpg
