Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Cutoff

The ruts were mapped for their 2002 National Register nomination. Twelve separate segments survive, about 884 meters in all. On the ridge east of Spring Creek the clay loam kept few traces, but on the slope coarser soil let wagons cut deep. Three distinct descent routes fan out to three separate crossings of the creek, which the nomination reads as wagons leaving the line for safety and for braking on the grade. A 1960s dam turned the creek into a pond and erased the north-bank exits. The nomination calls them the longest contiguous ruts left on the road.

What the plaque says

Nebraska City- Fort Kearny Cutoff Thousands of oxen-drawn wagons passed here from 1860 to 1867, before completion of the Union Pacific Railroad across Nebraska. Carrying military and mining supplies, and emigrants moving west, they cut deep ruts across the tallgrass prairie and at Spring Creek fording sites. The cutoff was the shortest route from the Missouri River to Fort Kearny, where several overland trails merged, and one of Nebraska's most important historic roads. The still-visible ruts are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Nebraska State Capitol — 11 mi
  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.

More markers nearby

• Civilian Conservation Corps Co. 2738 — 3.1 mi
• Rock Island Wreck Site, 1894 — 8.3 mi
• The Lincoln Regional Center — 8.8 mi
• 1776 Bicentennial Prairie Marker 1976 — 9.3 mi