The Rails, the River and the Road

Like a bridge suspended over a grassy sea of glittering emerald-and-gold-lined waves, a 272-mile stretch of Nebraska Highway 2 called the Sandhills Journey National Scenic Byway connects Grand Island to Alliance. The highway begins in soybean and corn country and proceeds through the state’s rolling Sandhills, an expansive ancient prairie dotted with cattle. It concludes on a sweet note among sugar beet cropland and golden wheatfields.

Early settlers in the Sandhills drawn to the area by the 1862 Homestead Act faced immeasurable challenges in building a better life. But now caravans pass through for different reasons. 

“You come here for the rails, the river and the road,” said Terry Licking, byway president. “And you get rest, relaxation and rejuvenation.”

In this two-part series, Nebraska Life travels the byway to discover the hidden natural wonders, human-made landmarks and fascinating personalities that make the Sandhills one of the nation’s most pristine reminders of how open the West once was (and still is in many places). We begin our two-part story with the first stretch, from Grand Island to Dunning, a journey of 121 miles.

We embark knowing we aren’t the first to, as the highway’s slogan goes, be “on 2 something.” CBS News journalist Charles Kuralt was among the byway’s biggest admirers, ranking it as one of America’s 10 most beautiful highways.

“From the first time I ever drove along it, I’ve been in love with Highway 2. It’s not that there’s a special something to see along Nebraska’s Highway 2. There’s a special nothing to see,” he said in one of his famous On the Road reports. “Like the sea, the emptiness of the sandhills gives the traveler a strange sense of comfort, there’s a feeling that as long as these two things are in order, the earth and the sky, all the rest can be forgotten until tomorrow. Highway 2 is not just another highway that goes somewhere; Highway 2 is somewhere.”

Exploring Grand Island

Travelers find Grand Island’s Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer an ideal place for an orientation to the voyage. The 200-acre museum includes a reconstructed 1890s railroad town. Living history reenactors guide visitors through historic buildings, like actor Henry Fonda’s birth home, while demonstrating trades of the era, including blacksmithing, cooking and carpentry. The Leo B. Stuhr Building and Gus Fonner Memorial Rotunda display temporary and permanent collections focused on Nebraska’s settlement history. Stuhr is most popular during the summer months, but it’s open year-round. There’s fall color in autumn, a synthetic ice-skating rink in winter and colorful blooms in spring.

In downtown Grand Island, drivers stop at Coney Island Lunch Room for a meal worthy of an epic road trip. Owner George Katrouzos’ grandfather bought the business during the Great Depression for $600. George still serves the restaurant’s signature dish, the “coney” hot dog topped with loose, finely ground beef and a unique chili seasoning, often paired with french fries and a chocolate malt made from real ice cream mixed in a classic mixer.

The byway begins two miles away at Veterans Park on Old Highway 2. A Lockheed T-33A Shooting Star jet stands along a path where dozens of American flags flutter in the breeze. The park provides a peaceful moment for reflection on the sacrifice of servicepeople who paved the way for the freedoms we enjoy today, including driving on postwar highway projects.

Cairo to Broken Bow

Beyond Grand Island, travelers find familiar Nebraska scenes of fertile farmland and friendly small towns. A sculpture of a camel and pyramid welcomes visitors. Another whimsical nearby road sign marks the direction of and distance to nearby towns and world capitals – as well as directions to Heaven and “The Other Place.” Across the highway, Jenna and Joel Kaczor renovated the century-old Farmers State Bank of Cairo into the Medina Street Vault coffee shop. Passion and “high levels of caffeination” fueled a restoration project that revealed the original tin ceilings, bank vault and plaster walls. Diners delight in the shop’s sandwiches, soups and brews.

Traveling onward to Ravenna, a historical marker highlights Solon Borglum, who took over his family’s ranch near this spot at 17. Solon dabbled in sketches and sculptures of Western life. Local newspapers reported that Solon carved a large image of an American Indian in the bluffs near the ranch. An 1890 visit from older brother and full-time sculptor John Gutzon Borglum changed their lives. Some believe John was first inspired to sculpt Mount Rushmore after seeing his brother’s carving in the bluffs and convinced his younger sibling to take up sculpture permanently. Solon would travel from California to Paris, gaining recognition as a “sculptor of the prairie” for his works inspired by ranching.

An artist working in a different medium who was less successful during his lifetime shared Borglum’s prairie inspirations. Homesteader Solomon Butcher followed his family west from Illinois to Custer County to occupy a sod house, a simple structure constructed from thickly rooted prairie grass since the region lacked more expensive building materials like wood or stone. Butcher had little interest in farming. His trade of photography would become his legacy instead. In 1886, he began work on a pictorial history of the county. His father provided him with a team and wagon, which was converted into a mobile photo lab. Butcher crisscrossed the county in the wagon for the next several years, taking photographs and recording his subjects’ life stories.

It would take 15 years for Butcher to complete the book due to a series of setbacks, including economic depressions and a house fire that destroyed his first recorded narratives and prints. Luckily, Butcher’s glass plate negatives stored in a granary during the fire survived. He eventually sold the bulk of his collection to the Nebraska State Historical Society for $600.

More than 3,000 of Butcher’s negatives survive today, a third depicting sod houses and their occupants stoically gathered with their livestock and possessions in front of their abodes. The Custer County Historical Society Museum in Broken Bow displays prints of Butcher’s work, providing a time-machine-like window into pioneer life. Museum director Tammy Hendrickson eagerly leads visitors through the exhibit or helps those with local connections track their ancestry in the society’s extensive records library.

Across the street from the museum, the Arrow Hotel, built in 1928, intrigues history buffs and train fans. The attached Bonfire Grill seats diners in repurposed railcar booths. The resilient community bounced back after a devastating fire on the adjacent eastern block. Local businesses exclusively contributed furniture, carpeting and handiwork for reconstruction efforts on the block, which became the hotel’s new wing.

The name of nearby Kinkaider Brewery is also a nod to Broken Bow’s early settlers, who, like the homesteaders, occupied free Nebraska land under terms of the 1904 Kinkaid Act allowing each settler 640 acres upon payment of a filing fee of $14. Kinkaider’s small-batch, hand-crafted beers are made with locally grown ingredients like pumpkins, corn and jalapeños. Its “Frame the Butcher,” a hoppy India Pale Ale, pays homage to Custer County’s famous photographer.

Broken Bow hosts the byway’s Visitor Center featuring displays of local railroading, ranching and rodeo lifestyle. The center is housed in a 150-year-old barn that formerly stored golf carts west of town but was trucked through the city to its east end, remodeled and painted from white to bright red. Motorists use this rest stop to study sightseeing opportunities ahead.

Merna to Dunning

Continuing westward, the shining patina of Dave Downey’s collection of more than 30 windmills rises on the east end of Merna. Downey’s well-drilling business helps repair windmills statewide and dug the well for the windmill at the byway’s Broken Bow Visitor Center. At the suggestion of a cousin, Downey raised vintage windmills he had been gifted as an added attraction for passing motorists and people staying at his Cuzn Eddyz Campground.

“We have people pull in here, and they act like they are scared to come in, but it’s OK,” Downey said. “I always say, take all the pictures you like, just leave your footprints.”

A spur road just south of the campground leads to Victoria Springs State Recreation Area. Visitors savor this oasis of tree-lined hikes around a tranquil lake lined by rentable rustic cabins, colorful paddleboats waiting for water enthusiasts and picnic areas ready for family cookouts. Opportunities abound for watching wildlife like waterfowl and deer. Once part of the homestead of Custer County judge Charles R. Mathews, the park includes two original log cabins he built, one as his home and the other as the county’s first post office.

From the recreation area, State Highway 21A diverts drivers 6 miles west back to the byway and the town of Anselmo. The belltower and bright limestone spires of St. Anselm’s Catholic Church tower elegantly over the village. Known as the “Cathedral of the Sandhills,” this late gothic revival building features vivid burgundy brickwork and stained-glass windows. Visitors might be tempted to think the village was named for the saint, but railroad official Anselmo B. Smith is the namesake.

The elevation gently increases as the byway curves northwest. The once-level ground begins to undulate as the region’s namesake sandhills rise more and more prominently like flowing waves over the horizon, revealing clues to the nature of the terrain to come.

The highway crosses the effervescently bubbling Dismal and Middle Loup Rivers, which converge just east of Dunning. In displays of adept flight, clouds of cliff sparrows hunt for insects around bridges bisecting the two rivers, mesmerizing birdwatchers who take the time to leave their cars and stretch their legs.