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Structure
Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 45 general entries. We are selecting 30 for display.
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Nebraska
| Red Cloud was named after a Warrior Chief. What tribe was chief Red Cloud from? | Red Cloud, Nebraska
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Sioux. Red Cloud was a Ogallala Souix Warrior Chief.
| South of town, there is a hill. Legends say Red Cloud's daughter is buried on this hill, what was her name? | Red Cloud, Nebraska
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Blue Cloud. Legend has it, that Princess Blue Cloud and her horse are buried on a hill south of the Republican River, right south of town.
Willa Cather . Most all of Willa Cather's books are set in Red Cloud.
| In the book 'My Antonia', what name does Red Cloud's most famous author give the town of Red Cloud? | Red Cloud, Nebraska
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| Four and one half miles east of Red Cloud is the largest circular barn in the country. What is its name? | Red Cloud, Nebraska
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Starke Round Barn. Constructed in 1902, it is three stories tall and is listed on the National Register of Historic Sites.
| Red Cloud is the home of Webster County's first church of what denomination? | Red Cloud, Nebraska
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Catholic. It was at the St. Juliana Catholic Church that Antonia's baby was baptized, and where she was later married.
Silas Garber . Silas Garber also has a grave marker in the Red Cloud cemetery
| Willa Cather graduated from Red Cloud High School. Which means it had to be built about what year if it was a new school at the time? | Red Cloud, Nebraska
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1901. This school has been standing for over 100 years, and we still have a lot of the same stuff used by Cather.
t. It is from an Oto Indian word meaning "broad water" or "flat river", in reference to the Platte River.
t. The motto can be found on the state seal.
Western meadowlark. In 1928, five birds were listed on ballots sent to schools, and the children voted for their favorites. The western meadowlark won, probably for being known for its joyful song.
Cottonwood. The American elm was named the state tree in 1937, but in the years following, Dutch elm disease killed great numbers of the elms in Nebraska. In 1972, the cottonwood, which is often associated with pioneer Nebraska, became the state tree.
Blue agate. The blue agate became the official gem on March 1, 1967 as part of the state's centennial celebration.
Mammoth. Large numbers of mammoth fossils have been found in Nebraska. They have been found in nearly every county in the state.
Prairie agate. The prairie agate became the state rock in 1967.
Little bluestem. Little bluestem is an important native grass used for hay and forage. It became the official state grass in 1969.
t. Since 1921 the state poet laureate is John G. Neihardt. He has written five long narrative poems that are regarded as national epics. The state poet is William Kloefkorn. He became Nebraska's first state poet on September 11, 1982. He is a university professor who has written many poems and books about prairie life.
Beautiful Nebraska. The state song was written by Jim Fras and Guy G. Miller. It became the official song on June 21, 1967.
Panorama Point. Panorama Point is in Johnson Township, and is 5,424 feet.
Custer. The geographic center is in Custer, 10 miles northwest of Broken Bow.
76 degrees F. Nebraska's climate is far from mild. Temperatures range from severe cold in the winter to blistering heat in the summer.
23 degrees F. Temperatures and rainfall vary quite a lot from year to year.
Lincoln. Lincoln became the venue for the Nebraska state fair in 1901. It will continue be held there until 2009, and will move to Grand Island in 2010.
It is held in late August and early September.
| The trip started in Gretna, where I hooked up with my buddy Mike and his young son, whose name has been suppressed to spare him the embarrassment of what ended up happening as these merry knights of the road set off to find "The Good Life". (Warning: it involved car art.)
The first stop of the 2007 road trip was at the Stuhr Museum in Hall County. This facility boasts a fine permanent collection, both of artifacts of pioneer life and Native American culture. Along with a replica of a typical 1897 railroad town and a Pawnee earth lodge, this museum also includes several tributes to a well-known actor from the area, Mr. Henry Fonda. What city is home to the Stuhr Museum? | Western Nebraska - Road Trip 2007
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Grand Island. On our visit, the museum was gearing up for Hall County's 150th Anniversary; unfortunately, we couldn't stay. Among the highlights of the museum is its staff of living history reenactors, including a hatmaker, a fine general store, a tinsmith, a carpenter (all actively practicing their trades) and a 93-year-old fellow running the hardware store who had real-life experience using most of the implements in the place. I don't recall his name, but the man knew his stuff and knew it well.
| After picking up another youngster in Gothenburg (whose identity will also be kept private - trust me, he doesn't want his good name associated with this debacle, either), we headed to North Platte’s Cody Go-Carts, featuring a substantial figure-8 track, bumper boats, mini golf, a scenic waterslide, and a shorter slick-track course where I, having passed on riding, could have a good belly laugh at my companions spinning wildly out of control. For what towering figure of the American West are Cody Go-Carts named? | Western Nebraska - Road Trip 2007
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Buffalo Bill. North Platte boasts the legendary showman’s "Rest Ranch" (now a state park), as a major attraction. As the town was Cody’s home in retirement, many local sites are named in his honor, including the city park and a rather impressive "tourist trap", Fort Cody, which features the former Medal of Honor winner’s visage looking down from a 30-foot painting.
| Our last stop of the waning day was Front Street, a commercial attraction in Nebraska’s self-proclaimed "Cowboy Capital" featuring a full-on shootout, a frontier-themed musical, and a pair of museums dedicated to the Old West, Native American culture, and fun things to do with petrified wood. (I am NOT making this up, folks.) What Keith County Seat is home to Front Street? | Western Nebraska - Road Trip 2007
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Ogallala. Another Old West-themed Ogallala attraction is Boot Hill, an honest-to-goodness cowboy cemetery rediscovered by archeologists and historians in the 1970s. Researchers have painstakingly identified many of the remains therein - those that were unclaimed by living family now rest beneath stylized wooden markers, upon which my party and I placed polished stones (more durable than flowers) as tokens of respect.
| The morning of our second day saw our band of brothers venture west anew, this time in search of Nebraska’s best known natural formation, a geologic guide for Antebellum settlers traveling the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails. What is the name of this striking landmark, now featured on the back of Nebraska’s Statehood Quarter? | Western Nebraska - Road Trip 2007
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Chimney Rock. Though modest in height compared to the igneous formations of the Rockies further west, Chimney Rock still makes an impact, and was mentioned in the diaries of westward American emigrants more often than any other site. The world traveler Sir Richard Burton wrote admiringly of the formation when he visited it in 1860 after investigating the Church of Latter-Day Saints in Utah - and if you know much about Burton, you know he was not an easy man to impress. But that is another quiz.
| After Scotts Bluff, the trip got a little weird - but that’s what we were there for. We ventured north to Alliance, Nebraska, home of a singularly modern tribute to a singularly ancient monument. What venerable site that has survived millennia on Britain’s Salisbury Plain can claim an homage in Box Butte County, Nebraska? | Western Nebraska - Road Trip 2007
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Stonehenge. For some odd reason, Carhenge - a replica of Stonehenge made entirely of junked automobiles - was the primary motivation behind the whole trip. Finished in 1987 by Jim Reinders, the upright cars rest in holes five feet deep, while the lintels atop the circle are welded on. In addition, there are other car sculptures in the "Carhenge Art Preserve" nearby, including a quite impressive spawning salmon and a Tyrannosaurus Rex sculpted from defunct autos. Again, this must be seen to be believed.
| Having seen some of the most impressive sights of the region, we now set our faces back east for our homes. This, of course, was all part of the plan - the route home included a drive through an area named by Patricia Schultz as one of the "1,000 Places (in the USA and Canada) To See Before You Die" in the book of the same name. What is the name of this vast landscape whose unique terrain remains an elegy to the effects of the last Ice Age? | Western Nebraska - Road Trip 2007
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The Sandhills. Perhaps even more impressive than the Sandhills is the route we took west - Highway 26 through the North Platte Valley. While the Sandhills feature rolling mounds of the granular material, the North Platte Valley - which in days of yore embraced the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail - has fantastically scenic gorges, striking limestone outcrops, and in places a fine view of the looming Lake McConaughy - and some cool historic sites to boot.
| This unusual museum arches right over I-80. With its life-size dioramas, classic cars, and high-tech displays, the Great _______ River Road Archway Monument pays tribute to settlers of which river valley? | Nebraska: Where the West Begins
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Platte. A scene from the 2002 movie "About Schmidt" was filmed here; photos of the movie's star Jack Nicholson were to be seen on the wall of the gift shop, when I visited the Monument in 2003.
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