The last autumn leaves cling to cottonwoods, elms and sugar maples, signaling the conclusion of another harvest. Farmers work the fields in combines converting corn stalks to stubble and raising dust clouds that fill the air with the scent of earth. Motorists can follow the changing foliage of fall as its patchwork quilt spreads along U.S. Highway 136.

Known as the Heritage Highway, the road stretches nearly 240 miles across 10 Nebraska counties, starting at the Nemaha County village of Brownville on the Missouri River and ending near the Furnas County village of Edison in the Republican River Valley. The route spans southern Nebraska on a two-lane highway, providing stunning seasonal views and insight into the state’s pioneers.

Most travelers begin the journey today as 19th century pioneers did, on its eastern edge along the banks of the “Mighty Mo.” Riverboats rather than automobiles were once the primary mode of transportation in Brownville. You can learn about them at the Museum of Missouri River History, housed in a massive dredge boat that once worked to keep the river navigable.

Today, visitors can cruise the Missouri on the working steamboat Spirit of Brownville or spend the night at the River Inn Resort, an 18-room, floating bed and breakfast that looks just like the riverboats of yore.

“You can Google it, and you won’t find another hotel like this in the United States,” said River Inn owner Randel Smith.

The inn might call to mind a Mississippi steamboat, but the open-air top deck is pure Nebraska: The deck is covered with artificial turf recycled from the Cornhuskers’ practice football field.

Landlubbers less inclined to paddle the river can hike the Steamboat Trace Trail along the river’s shore for leisurely leaf peeping.

Westbound on the highway, fall foliage flourishes in Auburn, Nebraska’s original Tree City U.S.A. Northeast of Auburn and south of Brock is peaceful Coryell Park on the site of an early Nebraska homestead. The park features a playground, reconstructed log cabin, an on-site chapel often used for weddings and a shrine encircling a stone brought from Solomon’s Quarry in Jerusalem.

Back on the highway, drivers cross into Johnson County and the city of Tecumseh, the county seat. In Tecumseh’s center is a town square occupied by a stately courthouse lined by oaks with leaves tinged in shades of late autumn red and orange complementing its brick facade.

The post office has a mural honoring the city as the 1896 site of the first Rural Free Delivery mail service in Nebraska. The nationwide RFD system was the brainchild of Tecumseh’s Emanuel Spiech.

“At that time, it was really something to have your mail delivered,” said Judy Coe, a Tecumseh resident and president of the Heritage Highway Association. Farmers at remote homesteads who previously had to ride many miles to town to get mail were connected to the world thanks to RFD, Coe said.

Drivers discover the Elijah Filley Stone Barn soon after entering Gage County. Only 80 days passed between when work began to clear the ground for the barn’s foundation in the heat of August 1874 and the completion of the cupola on top, but the timing saved local agriculture. To build the barn, Filley employed farmers who lost their crops in the great grasshopper invasion that summer. The site is the largest native limestone bank barn in Nebraska, and Filley kept farmers from abandoning the county after a disastrous harvest.

Just east of Beatrice, the extra fruits of a much more successful harvest help sustain families and contribute to the local economy. Lynette Jurgens placed surplus pumpkins at the front of her driveway off Highway 136 in 2001. It didn’t take long for passersby to empty the crop of its excess yield. Two years later she officially opened Korner Pumpkin Patch with her brother Don Jobman by charging for pumpkins, but there has never been an admission fee.

Travelers continuing into Beatrice’s charming downtown may witness trick-or-treating children clad in costumes of ghouls, princesses or superheroes. The city hosts the Night of the Great Pumpkin, including an annual showing of the classic Peanuts movie special on the Thursday before Halloween.

A detour from the byway four miles west of Beatrice leads to Homestead National Monument of America. The Homestead Act, which granted 160 acres of free land to anyone who would settle it, went into effect on Jan. 1, 1863. Just after midnight on that day, Daniel Freeman persuaded a clerk to open a Brownville land office so he could file a homestead claim located at the present-day monument. The sloping roof of the Heritage Center resembles the steel plows that dug into the prairie, opening the West to agriculture. The monument stores more than 60,000 artifacts and documents dedicated to the pivotal legislation. Hikers enjoy native tallgrass and two miles of hiking trails encircling the center.

The Heritage Highway intersects with the historic Oregon Trail near Fairbury, where splendid fall foliage is found at McNish Park or encircling the elegant cottonwood-lined Jefferson County Courthouse. Few other places in the state are as connected with frontier lore as Rock Creek Station State Historical Park, about eight miles southeast of the city. The site, where wagon ruts are still visible, was a stopover for Pony Express riders and stagecoaches, and it is where Wild Bill Hickok began his gunfighting career in 1861 by killing former station owner David McCanles.

Travelers on the Heritage Highway can take a few pieces of history home with them in the form of local antiques during the Trail of Treasures, a 300-mile-long garage sale stretching along the byway from Brownville to McCook. Fairbury resident Julie Katz was instrumental in creating the event, Oct. 3-5, now in its  14th year with hundreds of participating sellers.

Antiques hunters can find about anything they’d hope to find, Katz said. Her friend Tammy Cleary turned her Fairbury basement into a 1950s diner – complete with functioning shake machine, soda glasses, restaurant booth and even a phone booth – entirely with things she bought on the Trail of Treasures. “By the time she was done, she could fix soda pops and chocolate malts for her grandchildren,” Katz said.

Perhaps the byway’s most picturesque scene is St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Gilead. Set on a rolling hillside along the road, the white church with round windows and a pleasantly pointy steeple could be the prototype for all prairie houses of worship. The St. Paul’s congregation moved to this building, previously a Catholic church, after a 1996 tornado destroyed their old Lutheran church.

The byway passes south of Hebron at the intersection of Highway 81. Humidity begins to subside as the highway continues into more arid country. Once a hub of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, trains are easy to find in Deshler. Spring Creek Model Trains, a downtown store dedicated to the toys, and the Wheelhouse Restaurant, with a steam locomotive protruding toward the highway, delight rail fans.

Sorghum, soybean and wheat fields paint the countryside in orange-tasseled hues, vibrant green leaves and waving golden textures. They’re irrigated by the Republican River, which begins to flirt with the road as it approaches Red Cloud. Among the city’s red brick-lined streets and impressive Victorian architecture, it’s impossible to ignore the influence of Webster County author Willa Cather. Tours of the Farmers and Merchants Bank, Red Cloud Opera House and Cather’s childhood home bring to life scenes immortalized in such novels as My Antonia.

Travelers marching farther into western Nebraska see the Franklin Veterans Memorial containing an M60A1 Patton main battle tank, an M113A2 armored personnel carrier and an F-80 Shooting Star fighter jet from the Korean War. Those looking overhead may spot squadrons of migrating pelicans and eagles navigating their way through the North American Central Flyway. Many roost along Nebraska’s second largest lake, the 13,250-acre Harlan County Reservoir. Bracketed by Republican City and Alma, the lake attracts avian species and anglers to its walleye, bass and catfish-rich waters.

The Heritage Highway tour ends in Edison, a village not named for the famous inventor but the founding postmaster's son, Eddie Rohr. Here, golden-leaved cottonwoods curve beneath the towering Furnas County co-op elevators storing the grains of the recent harvest to feed the nation.

Highway 136 departs the path of the Republican River veering northward to merge with Highway 34. As the byway closes amid fields in fallow and farmsteads preparing for the coming hard frosts of winter, one can imagine the words of Cather’s O Pioneers as they drive onward. “We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it – for a little while.”

First appearing in the September/October 2017 issue of Nebraska Life, this story returns with new updates.