Mari Sandoz in Lincoln

The Lincoln years ended in a quarrel with the town. After J Street, Sandoz lived at the Shurtleff Arms, 645 South 17th Street, the only one of her Lincoln homes still standing, and wrote Capital City there. Slogum House, her 1937 Sandhills novel warning of fascism, had been pulled from the McCook and Omaha public libraries in 1938 and called dirty. Capital City, published in 1939 and read as an attack on Lincoln, brought hate mail and threats. She left for Denver in 1940, partly to escape the backlash, and settled in New York City in 1943.

What the plaque says

Mari Sandoz in Lincoln Mari Sandoz (1896-1966), Nebraska historian and novelist, lived at this site, 1226 J Street, from 1925 to 1937. Here in 1928, she began writing Old Jules, the biography of her father. From the J Street curb, she often wrote and watched construction of the capitol, completed in 1932. That same year, Sandoz submitted Old Jules to the Atlantic Monthly Press nonfiction contest, but it was rejected seven months later. Frustrated, she burned over 70 short stories behind the house, and in January 1934, (Continued on other side) Sandoz Heritage Society Nebraska State Historical Society, 2017 Mari Sandoz in Lincoln (Continued from other side) Sandoz began work for the Nebraska State Historical Society on the ninth floor of the capitol. In 1935, Sandoz revised Old Jules for the Atlantic Press contest. Two days before the deadline, the manuscript fell into a scrub bucket, but Sandoz managed to retype it with the help of friends. Then on June 13, 1935, Sandoz received a telegram at the capitol. Old Jules won the first-place, $5,000 prize. Its subsequent publication launched Sandoz' prolific writing career. Sandoz Heritage Society Nebraska State Historical Society, 2017

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Nebraska State Capitol — steps away
  Bertram Goodhue's 400-foot tower on the prairie, built in four phases from 1922 to 1932 and paid off on completion, home of the only one-house legislature in the country.
• Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum — 25 mi
  Two hangar-sized halls beside I-80 near Ashland holding the bombers and reconnaissance planes of the command that ran America's nuclear force from Offutt, south of Omaha, from 1948 to 1992.

More markers nearby

• County-City Building — 0.2 mi
• The Ferguson House — 0.3 mi
• Nebraska Statehood Memorial — 0.3 mi
• U. S. Post Office and Courthouse (Old City Hall) — 0.5 mi