Geography and Industry

The Missouri River forms part of Nebraska's northeastern border. The other major river system that passes through Nebraska is the Platte. The Platte is formed in western Nebraska where the North Platte and South Platte rivers meet. The Platte itself flows into the Missouri near Nebraska's largest city, Omaha. Eastern Nebraska is very fertile soil, and it's mostly farmland, especially along the river bottoms. The majority of Nebraska's population lives in eastern Nebraska. Eastern Nebraska's farmers grow mostly grains such as wheat and barley, or hay and alfalfa for feeding hogs and cattle and other animals.

Cities such as Lincoln and Omaha are the hubs of the insurance industry, which is centered in eastern Nebraska.

Western Nebraska is cattle country. Nebraska is currently the second leading cattle-producing state in the United States! Western Nebraska has lots of sand dunes and sandstone rock formations. These formations shelter small valleys of grass that are ideal ranges for cattle grazing.

One of these formations is Scott's Bluff, which is very close to Nebraska's western border with Wyoming. It's at the center of the Scott's Bluff National Monument, which is part of the Oregon Trail, and is quite a tourist spot. Other places in Nebraska that are popular with tourists include the Fort Niobara Wildlife Refuge and Father Flanagan's Boys Town in Omaha.

History

Mound-building Native Americans who were members of the Mississippian culture lived in eastern Nebraska up until the culture disappeared, around 1500. The first Europeans visited the region not long afterward when Spanish conquistadors under the command of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado entered Nebraska, looking for gold. They didn't find anything but native villages and rolling prairie.

Such Native American tribes as the Pawnee, Ponca, Osage, and Oto lived in what is now Nebraska when the French arrived to trade for furs in the eighteenth century. The Ponca, Osage, and Oto farmed in the fertile eastern river valleys. The Pawnee were nomads who hunted buffalo out in western Nebraska.

The French claimed Nebraska for themselves, and in 1803 they sold it to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Explorers such as the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–06) and Zebulon Pike's expedition (1806) helped map out much of the area for the United States. It was just a few years later (1813) that the first permanent settlement in Nebraska was established: a trading post at Bellevue.

Beginning in 1819, steamboats ran up and down the Missouri River. Omaha quickly boomed into a bustling river port. When settlers began moving west, along what eventually became known as the Oregon Trail, on their way to settle the Pacific Coast, Nebraskans made a lot of profit by selling them supplies.

In 1854 Nebraska became a territory as a result of the complicated Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed people in U.S. territories to vote and decide for themselves whether or not their territories (and eventually their states) would be slave states (states where slavery was legal) or free states (states where slavery was outlawed). During the Civil War that followed soon after, Nebraska was a free territory, and entered the Union shortly after the end of the war, in 1867.

WORDS TO KNOW

Nomad

Nomads are groups of people who don't live in any single position, place, or situation for very long. Most of the buffalo-hunting plains tribes of North America were nomadic.

Unicameral

Nebraska is the only state in the Union to have a state government that is unicameral. This means that rather than having two houses, such as a house of representatives and a senate, as our national government does (a bicameral legislature), the state legislature of Nebraska has only one house. There is no state senate in Nebraska.