Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Cutoff

The machine behind the road's nickname was called the Prairie Motor. J. R. Brown, a Minnesota pioneer who had been federal agent to the Dakota, ordered it from the Novelty Iron Works in New York, where it took eighteen months and $12,000 to build. It left for Denver in July 1862 and had gone nine miles when a crank broke, and its driver, David L. Osborn, went east for another. The U.S.-Dakota War then called Brown home, the backing failed, and the wagon sat idle on the Morton ranch before ending up at the Nebraska City gas works.

What the plaque says

Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Cutoff You are near the old freighting trail of the Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Cutoff. Prior to rail- road construction, thousands of wagons transported supplies to Fort Kearny and other military posts throughout the West. The Mormon War and the discovery of gold in the Colorado and Montana territories brought Nebraska City to prominence as a freighting center between 1858-1865. Early freighters used the Ox-Bow Trail which looped north to the Platte Valley. It provided abundant grass and water but it was overly long and often plagued by muddy lowlands. Because of competition from other Missouri River towns, Nebraska City freighters sought a more direct route. The Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Cutoff, proposed in 1858 and first traveled in 1860, was first marked by a plowed furrow. Bridges and improvements were added when the famed Steam Wagon was brought to Nebraska Territory in 1862. This experiment failed, but the route continued to be called the "Steam Wagon Road." Freighting from Nebraska City peaked in 1865 when over 44 million pounds of supplies were shipped. Construction of the Union Pacific soon marked the end of major freighting on this road. Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arbor Lodge State Historical Park — 16 mi
  J. Sterling Morton's estate in Nebraska City, a four-room house of 1855 grown to 52 rooms among the trees he planted, home of the man who proposed Arbor Day in 1872.
• 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

• Cook — 11 mi
• 1882 Talmage, Nebraska 1982 — 13 mi
• U.S. Air Force Atlas Missile Site — 13 mi
• Bess Streeter Aldrich: 1881-1954 — 13 mi