The Great Plains

Nebraska's first irrigation law came out of a Kearney ditch. Samuel Clay Bassett writes that the line of a proposed Kearney canal appeared on an 1873 bird's-eye view, and that an 1875 attempt to build it failed when landowners would neither give nor sell a right of way. Senator E. C. Calkins then drew the act of 1877 making irrigation and power canals works of internal improvement with the right of eminent domain. Simon Murphy estimated the ditch at $21,448. Work began in September 1882, and before the canal was finished and enlarged its cost passed $400,000.

What the plaque says

The Great Plains West-bound travelers will leave the prairie regions of eastern Nebraska and enter the Great Plains within the next fifty miles. This semi-arid region stretching from Canada to Mexico and westward toward the Rockies was long known as the Great American Desert. Most early explorers and travelers thought the region to be of little value except to Indians and ranchers. Thousands of over- land travelers followed this, the Great Platte River Road, to the Golden West, but it was not until the establishment of Nebraska Territory in 1854 that pioneers could legally settle here. Even so, it was more than a decade later, after the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad, that settlement of the Plains could succeed economically. Since the Interstate highway follows the verdant Platte River Valley, travelers will recognize the change in geography only gradually. Valley farmers were among the first to recognize the importance of irrigation, which has now spread to the upland Plains. Today this is one of the richest and most productive areas in the Great Plains. Department of Roads Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Kearny State Historical Park — 6.3 mi
  The 1848 army post on the Platte, built on a strip of Pawnee land bought for $2,000 in goods, where emigrant wagons passed by the thousand and only the cottonwoods outlasted the fort.
• Rowe Sanctuary — 12 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

• Kearney-Fort Kearny — 1.9 mi
• Historic Kearney — 1.9 mi
• The Great Platte River Road — 2.4 mi
• Kearney Cotton Mill — 2.4 mi