Tag: great plains

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Road Trip Postscript: Once It Held Laughter, Once It Held Dreams

Near Rushville, Sheridan County, Nebraska. 
"You can find all kinds of ruins on the Great Plains; in dry regions, things last a long time. When an enterprise fails on the plains, people usually just walk away and leave it. With empty land all around, there is not much reason to tear down and rebuild on the same site. ..." — Ian Frazier, "Great Plains"
"For every surviving ranch, I passed a dozen ruined houses. The prairie was dotted about with wrecks. Their windows, empty of glass, were full of sky. Strips of ice-blue showed between the rafters. Some had lost their footing and tumbled into their cellars. ... Skewed and splayed, the derelicts made up a distinctive local architecture." — Jonathan Raban, "Bad Land"

In mid-September, my brother John and I drove west from Chicago on our return trip to California. We didn’t follow anything like a standard route. From western Illinois across the prairies and into the plains of eastern Wyoming we stuck almost exclusively to two-lane roads, or at least non-interstates: U.S. 30 and 20 across Iowa; Nebraska Highway 12 and U.S. 20 again (after veering briefly into South Dakota along the Missouri River) across the Cornhusker State; and U.S. 20 once more until it merged with Interstate 25 near Casper, Wyoming. (Here’s a collection of pictures from both the east- and westbound legs of the trip.)

One morning along the way, we backtracked from Chadron, Nebraska, to Rushville, then headed north toward the Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux Reservation just across the South Dakota border. The site of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre is on the reservation; it’s a spot I’ve long wanted to visit, and it was sort of an obvious bookend for our eastbound stop at the Little Big Horn battlefield.

A few miles up the road toward Pine Ridge we passed the house above. Both John and I, who had brought film cameras to record our travels, said we needed to remember to stop at the place on the way back from Wounded Knee. Three or four hours later, I was speeding back south when John said, “There it is.” “Really? Are you sure? I don’t think so. That doesn’t look like the same place to me.” “No — that’s the place.”

I hit the brakes hard, and we turned onto a dirt road adjacent to the house. I took note of a man on a tractor about a quarter-mile away and wondered whether he had some connection to the house. But I didn’t think about that for long. We broke out our cameras, including John’s 5-by-7 pinhole camera, a couple of older Nikons, and one of several rangefinder models I had brought along.

After about 15 minutes, I saw that the man on the tractor had stopped his plowing, climbed down, and was walking toward the house. I more than half-expected he would ask what the heck we were doing on his land. Instead, he said something like, “Picture day, huh, fellas?” Yes, the house was on his family’s land, but he was pretty genial and really just curious about what we were doing. It turned out that this was far from the first time he’d encountered passers-by who had stopped to photograph the house.

And about the house: The farmer/rancher, who told us his family name was Viher and that he’d been born here just after World War II , said it had been owned by a family named Rush (maybe the Rushes of Rushville?) and was last occupied in the 1940s. Mr. Viher said there was a problem with occasional vandalism on the property — at some point, someone had come along and burned down a barn adjacent to the house; a half-burned shed still stood.

On the Viher Ranch, Sheridan County, Nebraska.

There’s probably an essay waiting to be written here about why ruins like this attract our attention, but given the fact it’s taken me four months to sit down and write even a bare description of the visit, this is not it.

I did think to ask Mr. Viher if I could take his picture before he went back to plowing. He was agreeable.

Mr. Viher, September 2021.

Afterward, I did something I’d never done before: I had the picture printed, figured out the Vihers’ address on their ranch, and sent it to him. I didn’t hear back for a while and wouldn’t have been too surprised to get no response. But on New Year’s Eve, I got an email thanking me for the picture and respondng with a collection of snapshots of the house and other ranch scenes.

And those shots, if nothing else, show me that that picturesque wreck of a house out there on the plains speaks just as much to at least some of the folks living out there as it does to the random traveler with a camera.

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Road Blog: The 100th Meridian

Nebraska Highway 12, the “Outlaw Trail Scenic Byway,” in Keya Paha County. Everyone we encountered seemed law-abiding. Someone stopped while we were taking pictures of the sign to make sure we were OK.

We left Chicago on Wednesday morning and made it to Sioux City, Iowa, following what’s become a typical late-ish start (10:30, say, due to how slow I am to get ready) and quitting just at dark. It means we’re on the road for 10 or 11 hours each day.

Thursday we left Sioux City at about the usual time and spent the day zig-zagging back and forth across the Nebraska and South Dakota border as we headed west on two-lane roads, mostly on Nebraska’s Highway 12 and, further west, on U.S. 20. Four hundred miles or so later, we wound up in Chadron, Nebraska.

Someone — one would guess tourism-minded state and local officials and hopeful Chamber of Commerce folks — has styled Highway 12 “the Outlaw Trail Scenic Byway.” I can attest that the route is scenic, with sweeping vistas of the rolling country along the Missouri River on the road’s eastern end that transition slowly into the high plains and beginning of the Sand Hills on the western end. My only complaint, and you knew there had to be one, is that there’s no ready explanation along the road or on the Outlaw Trail websites about why, precisely, it’s called that.

One of the sites advertises an “adventure of friendly people, scenic sights and the history of Native American Tribes, outlaws, cowboys and pioneers. … Communities have museums waiting to be explored and murals waiting to be viewed. This region offers seasonal opportunities to hunt fauna or flora with arms or camera.  Please check on the current Covid situation.”

Highway 12 crosses the 100th Meridian west of Greenwich in Keya Paha County (‘keya paha is “turtle hill” in the Dakota language, per what I see online). I have an app on my phone that gives a very precise reading (to four decimal places) of latitude and longitude. When we got to the approximate locale, we parked at a crossroad and I walked about 1,000 feet back to the spot the app indicated was very nearly precisely the exact location of the meridian (“very nearly precisely” because the app would jump between 99.9996 and 100.0005 degrees with a single stride east or west).

John and I both took pictures to commemorate the spot. I wish I’d taken a shot of the little mark I gouged out on the road’s shoulder to mark the location.

See that fencepost? It’s just about exactly on the 100th Meridian.
Nebraska Highway 12, looking east into the humid eastern lowlands from the 100th Meridian.
My brother John lining up a pinhole camera 100th Meridian shot on sparsely traveled Nebraska Highway 12.

Why bother with the 100th Meridian? In the late 19th century, John Wesley Powell, the early explorer of the Grand Canyon and first head of the U.S. Geological Survey, proposed that line of longitude as marking the boundary between the wetter more humid areas of the eastern United States and the more arid regime of the West. Subsequent research found Powell’s observation to be spot on — though his other important ideas about the implications for development of the western United States have been largely ignored. More recently, scientists have been assessing how the dry transition that occurs along the 100th Meridian appears to be moving east due to the influence of climate change. You can read more here: “Whither the 100th Meridian? The Once and Future Physical and Human Geography of America’s Arid–Humid Divide. Part I: The Story So Far.“

I’ll also note before posting that we have not one but two 100th Meridian museums on the Plains: one in Cozad, Nebraska, one in Erick, Oklahoma. Next time I’m roaming around out here. …

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Guest Observation: More on Crazy Horse

I just re-read Ian Frazier’s “Great Plains.” I had forgotten that among the many subjects he focuses on is Crazy Horse, the Lakota Oglala chief (how times change: a generation ago, his predominant identification among the wasichu would have been Sioux. I digress. Back to Frazier …). He’s got a chapter that ranges from a street in Manhattan, where he encounters a man who says he’s the grandson of Crazy Horse, to Fort Robinson, Nebraska, where Crazy Horse was killed. Here’s the end of the chapter, which I love for the way he reaches beyond a recitation of facts and tries to bring into the open the sentiment and emotion and meaning the facts inspire for him.

“Some, both Indian and non-Indian, regard him with a reverence that borders on the holy. Others do not get the point at all. George Hyde, who has written perhaps the best books about the western Sioux, says of the admirers of Crazy Horse, ‘They depict Crazy Horse as the kind of being never seen on earth: a genius in war, yet a lover of peace; a statesman, who apparently never thought of the interests of any human being outside his own camp; a dreamer, a mystic, and a kind of Sioux Christ, who was betrayed in the end by his own disciples–Little Big Man, Touch the Clouds … and the rest. One is inclined to ask, what is it all about?’

“Personally, I love Crazy Horse because even the most basic outline of his life shows how great he was; because he remained himself from the moment of his birth to the moment he died; because he knew exactly where he wanted to live, and never left; because he may have surrendered, but was was never defeated in battle; because, although he was killed, even the Army admitted he was never captured; because he was so free that he didn’t know what a jail looked like; because at the most desperate moment of his life he only cut Little Big Man on the hand; because, unlike many people all over the world, when he met white men he was not diminished by the encounter; because his dislike of the oncoming civilization was prophetic; because the idea of becoming a farmer apparently never crossed his mind; because he didn’t end up in the Dry Tortugas; because he never met the President; because he never rode on a train, slept in a boardinghouse, ate at a table; because he never wore a medal or a top hat or any other thing that white men gave him; because he made sure that his wife was safe before going to where he expected to die; because although Indian agents, among themselves, sometimes referred to Red Cloud as ‘Red’ and Spotted Tail as ‘Spot,’ they never used a diminutive for him; because, deprived of freedom, power, occupation, culture, trapped in a situation where bravery was invisible, he was still brave; because he fought in self-defense, and took no one with him when he died; because, like the rings of Saturn, the carbon atom, and the underwater reef, he belonged to a category of phenomena which our technology had not then advanced far enough to photograph; because no photograph or painting or even sketch of him exists; because he is not the Indian on the nickel, the tobacco pouch, or the apple crate. Crazy Horse was a slim man of medium height with brown hair hanging below his waist and a scar above his lip. Now, in the mind of each person who imagines him, he looks different.

“I believe that when Crazy Horse was killed, something more than a man’s life was snuffed out. Once, America’s size in the imagination was limitless. After Europeans settled and changed it, working from the coasts inland, its size in the imagination shrank. Like the center of a dying fire, the Great Plains held that original vision longest. Just as people finally came to the Great Plains and changed them, so they came to where Crazy Horse lived and killed him. Crazy Horse had the misfortune to live in a place which existed both in reality and in the dreams of people far away; he managed to leave both the real and the imaginary place unbetrayed. What I return to most often when I think of Crazy Horse is the fact that in the adjutant’s office he refused to lie on the cot. Mortally wounded, frothing at the mouth, grinding his teeth in pain, he chose the floor instead. What a distance there is between that cot and the floor! On the cot, he would have been, in some sense, ‘ours’: an object of pity, an accident victim, ‘the noble red man, the last of his race, etc. etc.’ But on the floor Crazy Horse was Crazy Horse still. On the floor, he began to hurt as the morphine wore off. On the floor, he remembered Agent Lee, summoned him, forgave him. On the floor, unable to rise, he was guarded by soldiers even then. On the floor, he said goodbye to his father and Touch the Clouds, the last of the thousands that once followed him. And on the floor, still as far from white men as the limitless continent they once dreamed of, he died. Touch the Clouds pulled the blanket over his face: ‘That is the lodge of Crazy Horse.’ Lying where he chose, Crazy Horse showed the rest of us where we are standing. With his body, he demonstrated that the floor of an Army office was part of the land, and that the land was still his.”

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Monday Dribblings

Text vs. image: The New York Times has a sort of character essay this morning on father and son farmers in Lebanon, Kansas (the geographic center of the lower 48 states). It’s a good enough piece, though it tries to do too much–relate the end of a way of life and a son’s break with his father–with too little–maybe 500 words. As it happens, the text is accompanied by a video version of the piece. The story follows much the same outline, but it’s different: For one thing, you get to hear and see the reporter play his role, gently prompting a couple of the the answers the son gives in the story. You also get to see the way the dad plays to the camera when he’s talking to the son. At the same time, the father and son come off as more compelling characters; the kid especially seems a little guilty and torn about leaving the farm for school. The video version comes off as the better piece of storytelling; if nothing else, the beautiful visuals make it worth watching.

The other Foley scandal: Let me add my voice to those decrying the emails of former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.). I don’t need to rehash the story. But I think something has gone unmentioned in the furor over his come-ons to young congressional pages: His disgraceful prose style. For example, one email read:

“glad your home safe and sound…we dont go back into session until Sept 5,,,,si its a nice long break….I am back in Florida now…its nice here…been raining today…it sounds like you will have some fun over the next five weeks…how old are you now?…”

Maybe the congressman was just trying to adopt the breezy style of instant messaging (“cul8r!”) to demonstrate he was an electronic communications hepcat. His IMs with another page show he was a master of the form (“Maf54 (7:37:27 PM): how my favorite young stud doing”) despite his advanced age and high station. If so, he was going too far. Email accommodates a certain degree of informality–“Hey, guy” can substitute for the stuffy “Dear Hunk,” for example–but it is not an invitation to abandon form altogether, as Foley did. He seems incapable of maintaining a thought long enough to type it.

Foley would have done well to follow the example of one of his young correspondents, who shows an admirable respect for standard orthography and makes a game if less than perfect attempt to employ proper capitalization and punctuation:

“What happened was I gave certain people Thank-you cards, you know? I gave Foley one because he was a really nice guy to me and all. Then, he asked me to write my e-mail on the back of his. So I was like, ‘sure!’ because of course I had no suspicions.”