Nature's Gift: The Highway 34 Springs

The water here rises from the Ogallala, the stream-laid sand and gravel washed east from the Rocky Mountains that geologists named in 1899 for a locality near Ogallala station. The same beds hold the aquifer that irrigates the county. Dundy County lies in the Upper Republican Natural Resources District, which has metered and limited every irrigation well since 1979, believed the first such limit on farm water in the country, with a cap of 20 inches a year at the start. Even so, Dundy is among the state's sharpest declines, and the springhead was nearly dry in August 2021.

What the plaque says

Nature's Gift: The Highway 34 Springs Since times unrecorded, springs from the Ogallala Formation relieved travelers through the Republican Valley. In 1930, Benkelman citizens improved a nearby spring to benefit motorists on NE 3 (later US 34). The 1935 Republican River flood destroyed the original spring and highway. When the highway was relocated, this rest area was established in 1941 at the site of another spring. The highway was relocated again in 1970 and the state deeded the rest area to Dundy County. Local residents restored it in 2008. Hansen Charitable Foundation Nebraska State Historical Society, 2017

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arikaree Breaks — 16 mi
  A strip of loess canyons two or three miles wide cut across the northwest corner of Kansas, followed by a signed gravel tour north of St. Francis into Nebraska and back.

More markers nearby

• Ward Bond's Boyhood Home — 1.8 mi
• General Custer in Nebraska — 2.5 mi
• Prisoners of War in Dundy County — 8.2 mi
• The Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express — 16 mi