Sandhill Cranes

The Crane Trust on South Alda Road grew out of a fight over a Wyoming dam. When Grayrocks Dam was going up on a Platte tributary, Nebraska and the National Wildlife Federation objected that it would harm irrigation and wildlife downstream. A court-approved settlement in 1978 let the Missouri Basin Power Project finish the dam and fund a trust run by three trustees, one named by each party. The Trust protects nearly 10,000 acres, conducts the annual aerial sandhill crane count and since 2012 has run the Nebraska Nature & Visitor Center.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer — 9.8 mi
  Edward Durell Stone's island pavilion in Grand Island and an 1890s railroad town of moved buildings, among them the cottage where Henry Fonda was born in 1905.
• Rowe Sanctuary — 22 mi
  Audubon's sanctuary on the Platte near Gibbon, where the river's sandbars are kept bare so that sandhill cranes, more than a million in the valley each spring, can roost safely at night.

More markers nearby

• Martin Brothers — 1.7 mi
• Conflict of 1867 — 4.4 mi
• St. Joseph and Grand Island Railroad — 6.5 mi
• Original Townsite of Wood River — 8.8 mi