Nebraska was a Train Stop
The first eastern track for the transcontinental railroad was laid near Omaha in 1863, during the Civil War. Starting a major construction project in the middle of a war isn’t the most obvious thing, but before his election Lincoln was a railroad lawyer, he believed in the future of railroads, and he wanted to keep California, newly acquired and separated from the East by the Sierras, the Rockies, and the Great American Desert, from leaving the Union. He could have just sent the Californians candlesticks. Candlesticks are always a nice gift.
The railroad was constructed by the Western Pacific, Central Pacific, and Union Pacific Railroads, at a cost in current dollars of $3.5 billion. Construction was funded by stock sales, federal and state bonds, and federal land grants. The railroad wasn’t actually transcontinental. It didn’t go from, say, Baltimore to San Francisco, but there was already a network of trains in the East. The Transcontinental linked the existing eastern network to the West Coast through the largely unsettled West.
Serious talk of a transcontinental railroad began in the 1850s, and there were actually three proposed routes. A proposed northern route went through Montana to Oregon, a Southern route went through Texas, New Mexico, and modern Arizona,1 and the central route went through what would be Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. Severe cold presented too many technological problems for the northern route, and the supporters of the southern route kinda lost their influence after secession. You snooze, you lose.
Omaha is now Nebraska’s largest city because of the political maneuvers of Council Bluffs, Iowa. In 1854 the acting Nebraska territorial governor–acting because the appointed territorial governor got to Nebraska and promptly died–figured that if the train took the central route, then it would certainly go through Nebraska’s capital, wherever that might be. Council Bluffs wanted to be the train’s starting point, and Council Bluffians were developing Omaha directly across the Missouri River. The acting Nebraska governor, an Iowa boy, declared Omaha the territorial capital. I’m guessing lot prices skyrocketed, and Omaha and Council Bluffs got the train.
In 1867 when Nebraska became a state, every other Nebraskan wanted to punish Omaha for its hubris, so they moved the capital. Lincoln was chosen as the new site. To defeat the move, Omahaians loaded the proposed move with stuff they thought would kill it. If the capital moved, then the state prison would also be in Lincoln, and the new state University would be in Lincoln. Omaha was betting that if it loaded Lincoln with all the good things the move would fail and Omaha could keep the capital. It didn’t fail. The University of Nebraska is in Lincoln. The Nebraska State Penitentiary is in Lincoln.
Omaha still had the train, and it also has the College Baseball World Series.
Geography
At about 77,200 square miles, Nebraska is the 16th largest state by area, and with a population of about 2 million, it’s the 38th most populous state. That gives folk plenty of elbow room.
It is largely treeless prairie that divides into two sections. To the right of the 98th meridian Eastern Nebraska is part of the Dissected Til Plains. Western Nebraska is part of the Great Plains. As a child of the Great Plains, if I had stood in the front yard and looked due north, only Kansas, Oklahoma, and a bit of Texas would have kept me from walking over to Nebraska, and it’s perfectly possible that there were no trees to hinder my path.2 Of course if it had been February we’d like as not have been sharing a Canadian arctic blast, and in April we’d have shared a dust storm or two and some tornadoes. In summer we would have shared dry heat, wheat, and cattle.
The Dissected Til Plains don’t make it as far south as Texas. They basically run from Minnesota down to Kansas, centered on the Missouri/Iowa state line. If you have a yen to grow corn, look to the Til Plains, young man. This is Green Acres country, and it’s the place to be. It was formed by glaciers, and as they retreated the glaciers left plenty of flatness and plenty of rich soil.
It’s a mildly humid region, defined under the Koppen system as a Humid Continental Climate, with four distinct seasons and big shifts in seasonal temperatures. That means in summer, eastern Nebraska gets mighty hot. In winter it gets mighty cold. It would be a great place to see the leaves change, if only there were any leaves. It is not humid like New Orleans, but it’s the last breath of mildly moist air before the Great Plains. Most of Nebraska’s population and its largest cities, Omaha and Lincoln, are in the Dissected Til.
The Great Plains (and the American West) begin at the 98th meridian, roughly on a line north from Fort Worth, as decreed by Walter Prescott Webb. It is a semi-arid region unique not because of topography or geology but because of the lack of rainfall. Looking north along the 98th, to the right it rains at least 20 inches a year. To the left, stretching to the Rocky Mountains, it rains less than 20 inches a year. It is the beginning of the cultural West, and Webb, who loved the cowboy, says it is the land of barbed wire (bob war, if you want to talk like a native), windmills, and the revolver. It was also the land of the Plains tribes and the great buffalo herds. And the Dust Bowl.
The Missouri River borders Nebraska on the east, and continues north through the Dakotas into Montana, where it and its drainage is one of the great fly fishing destinations.3 The Republican River swerves through southern Nebraska from Colorado and on into Kansas.4 In central Nebraska the North and South Platte descend from Colorado to form the plain ol’ Platte, which then joins the Missouri between Omaha and Lincoln. North Nebraska has the Loup River,5 then the Niobara. We’ll be fishing in the far western Niobara region, just below the South Dakota Black Hills and above and to the left of the Nebraska Sandhills.
Population
As of 2024, the estimated population of Nebraska is 2,005,465. That’s less than the population of any of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, or Houston. It is a smaller population than the 35 most populous metropolitan statistical areas. It’s smaller than the Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro SMA, but larger than San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland SMSA.
More than 76.2% of the population is Anglo, 5.5% Black alone, and 12.9% Hispanic. Native Americans are 1.7% of the population.6 As already mentioned, it’s a big state without a lot of people, and there are only 25.5 people per square mile. New Jersey, the densest state, has 1,263 people per square mile. Nebraska has fewer people per square mile than Nevada (29) and more than Idaho (24).
Nebraska’s population is concentrated in the east. Omaha on the eastern border with Iowa has a population of 483,335, Lincoln, just a bit south and west, is 294,757. The Omaha and Lincon SMSAs contain more than half the state’s population. Of Nebraska’s 93 counties, 66 have populations of less than 10,000, and 11 have populations of less than 1,000. Of the smallest ten counties by population, all are located central to west, well west of Omaha.
In a European sort of way, Nebraska is ethnically diverse. More than 40% of the population identifies its heritage as German. That’s presumably a combination of railroads advertising Nebraska settlement in Germany in the late 19th century, European economic depression, and available land. There are also sizable populations of English and Eastern European settlers, and I’m certain there’s at least a smattering of Swedes.7
Nebraska is a meat-packing state, and it has a history of foreign-born and African American immigration to man the meat plants. Attitudes toward non-European immigration have been decidedly ambivalent, and from time to time, in the 1930s and the 2000s, immigration of recruited Mexican workers was followed by repatriation campaigns. There really is nothing new under the sun.
Politics
Nebraska gained statehood in 1867, before it had the required population. Presumably statehood was pushed through the Republican Congress to support the 14th Amendment. The same thing happened with Nevada during the Civil War, though there was also silver involved. Nebraska had its own connection to silver, with William Jennings Bryan, a Nebraska boy, electrifying the nation with his Cross of Gold speech at the 1897 Democratic national presidential convention.8
Nebraska was (and is) an agricultural state, and Nebraska politics were central to the rise and fall of the Populist Party in the 1890s. The Populists were a Southern and Midwestern farmer’s party with mildly socialist leanings, and by 1890 Populists controlled the Nebraska legislature. They passed a bunch of progressive legislation, including secret ballots, mandatory education, free textbooks, an eight-hour day (10 hours for farms), and railroad rate regulation. They pushed for public ownership of the railroads. Bryan coopted Populism, and as the new leader of the national Democratic Party folded the Populists into the Democrats.
From 1894 to 1900, Nebraska elected Populist governors. After 1900 there was a mishmash of Democrats and Republicans, leaning Republican. Since 1994, all of Nebraska’s governors have been Republican.
Nebraska voters now pretty much vote Republican. Nebraska is the only state with a unicameral legislature, and in the current legislature there are 33 Republicans, 15 Democrats, and one independent. There are no Populists. Probably leftover from its Populist days, it seems like every statewide office in Nebraska is elected, from Governor down to the university board of regents. A bunch of the elections are non-partisan, but all of the partisan statewide positions are held by Republicans.
Nebraska and Maine are the only states that allocate their electoral votes by Congressional District, which actually makes a lot of sense to me, so while Donald Trump carried 59.32% of Nebraska’s statewide popular vote in 2024, Kamala Harris carried Omaha and Lincoln, and Democrats received one of Nebraska’s five electoral college votes.
Nebraska Pride
I have the sense that no state instills more pride in its children than Nebraska. It’s generally admirable, but it was insufferable when the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers had better college football teams than the University of Texas.
In addition to a unicameral legislature, the University of Nebraska is also unicameral, having rolled both its land grant agricultural college and state university into one campus. Such thrift seems uniquely Nebraskan.
The University of Texas has gone to Omaha for the College World Series 38 times, which is the record. The University of Southern California holds the record for titles, with 12.
- And just a wee bit of Mexico, which led to the Gadsden Purchase. In 1854, planning for the southern railroad route, the US gave Mexico ten million dollars and received Tucson, Yuma, and the lefthand side of southern New Mexico. Ten million dollars went a lot further in 1854 than it does today. You couldn’t buy Greenland for that now. ↩︎
- This is gross exaggeration. There are often trees on the plains where there’s water, and in shelter belts. In Texas there were mesquites (though they were invasive from South Texas because of over-grazing). ↩︎
- I haven’t fished the Missouri in Montana, but I have in North Dakota. I didn’t catch anything. Together with the Mississippi and the Ohio, the Missouri forms the world’s fourth largest river system at over 3,900 miles. I haven’t fished the Ohio, either, or for that matter the Mississippi. ↩︎
- The Republican River Flood of 1935 was one of the Nebraska’s worst natural disasters, resulting in 113 deaths. Before the Europeans, the Pawnee farmed beans, corn, and pumpkin along the Republican River with the occasional jaunts afield for buffalo. In Kansas, the Republican joins the Missouri before the Missouri joins the Mississippi at St. Louis. ↩︎
- Loup is French for wolf, so French fur traders must have made it to Nebraska. ↩︎
- Native Americans in Nebraska included the Sioux, the Pawnee, the Sac and Fox, and the Omaha. Much of the indigenous population was displaced south to Oklahoma. There are eight remaining reservations in Nebraska, for the Ogallala and Santee Sioux, the Omaha, the Oto, the Pawnee, the Ponca, the Sac and Fox, and the Winnebago. ↩︎
- This is because my friend Clark, whose family is Swedish, is from Nebraska. I was surprised when at least half of Nebraska’s population wasn’t originally from Sweden. ↩︎
- The amount of dollars in circulation was limited by the value of the gold owned by the federal government. Western and Southern farmers wanted silver coinage to increase the money supply, spur inflation, and make their existing debts easier to repay. Bankers didn’t. ↩︎