Nine-Mile Prairie Memorial

The prairie took its name in the 1930s from lying exactly nine miles from the Lincoln city square. Its 228 acres were never plowed. The Department of Defense acquired the tract as part of a fenced buffer zone around a World War II bomb storage depot. The land passed to the City of Lincoln, and the Lincoln Airport Authority managed it from 1966. A 1981 state law let the authority sell it to a buyer who would keep it as prairie, and the University of Nebraska Foundation bought it in 1983.

What the plaque says

Marguerite Metzger Hall and Neil W. Hall Nine-Mile Prairie Memorial as a living tribute to our Pioneer Forebears and as a legacy for future generations A memorial to the Past, A joy to the Present, A heritage for the Future University of Nebraska Foundation Dedicated September 16, 1984 Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Nebraska State Capitol — 7.1 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

• Lincoln Army Air Field/Air Force Base — 1.3 mi
• Giant Glacial Boulder — 5.7 mi
• The North Bottoms — 6.1 mi
• The University of Nebraska — 6.4 mi