Chimney Rock

The spire went into Nebraska's pocket change in 2006. When the state chose its design for the U.S. Mint's fifty-state quarters, an online poll of 25 proposals drew more than 4,000 votes on its first day in August 2004, and Chimney Rock and Chief Standing Bear each drew more than 250 letters of support. Governor Dave Heineman picked Chimney Rock in 2005 over designs showing a notable Native American, the Sower and the Capitol. The coin went into circulation on April 7, 2006: an ox-drawn covered wagon, a pioneer family, the sun, and the rock named beneath it.

What the plaque says

Chimney Rock Rising 470 feet above the North Platte River Valley, Chimney Rock stands to the south as the most celebrated of all natural formations along the overland routes to California, Oregon, and Utah. Chimney Rock served as an early landmark for fur traders, trappers, and mountain men as they made their way from the Rockies to the Missouri River. To later emigrants, the solitary spire marked the end of plains travel and the beginning of the rugged mountain portion of their journey. The tip of the formation is 325 feet above the base. Chimney Rock is composed of Brule Clay with interlayers of volcanic ash and Arickaree sand- stone. Thousands of travelers carved their names in the soft base only to have these records disappear through the forces of nature. This eroded landmark is smaller than that which greeted early visitors to the area, but its presence for the generations of the near future is secure. In 1941 the eighty acres containing the site were transferred to the Nebraska State Historical Society by the Roszel F. Durnal family. In 1956 Norman and Donna Brown deeded additional land to the Society. In that same year Chimney Rock was designated a National Historic Site by the federal government. Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chimney Rock National Historic Site — 1.3 mi
  The spire the trains watched for along the North Platte, measured again and again by the people passing it, and shorter now than when the first of them wrote it down.
• Courthouse and Jail Rocks — 15 mi
  Two clay and sandstone buttes south of Bridgeport that emigrants called a castle, a capitol, a church and coffins before the courthouse and jail names stuck, with a path to their base.
• Wildcat Hills State Recreation Area — 17 mi
  A pine-covered escarpment south of Gering where bighorn sheep were released and mountain lions came back on their own, with Depression-era stone shelters and a nature center.
• Scotts Bluff National Monument — 20 mi
  A bluff named for a fur clerk whose death nobody witnessed, the narrow pass the wagons used beside it, William Henry Jackson's watercolors, and a 1937 road through three tunnels to the top.

More markers nearby

• Camp Clarke Bridge and Sidney-Black Hills Trail — 9.4 mi
• Bridgeport, Nebraska "Trail City, USA" — 13 mi
• Courthouse and Jail Rocks — 15 mi
• Rebecca Winters — 17 mi