The Great Platte Valley

Stephen H. Long's party came up this valley in 1820. Leaving Engineer Cantonment on the Missouri on June 6, it carried the zoologists Thomas Say and Titian Peale, the illustrator Samuel Seymour and Edwin James as physician, botanist and geologist, with six infantry privates. The men reached the Elkhorn on June 9, met two Pawnee riders near the Loup and camped a night at a Grand Pawnee village. They followed the north bank of the Platte for two weeks, crossed to the South Platte near present North Platte and on June 30 saw the mountains.

What the plaque says

The Great Platte Valley Here is the great Platte Valley, Highway to the West. On these nearby bluffs prehistoric Indians built their homes. The Pawnee and Oto established large earthlodge villages near here. As you travel west in the valley you will follow the route of the Indians, white explorers, and the early trails to the western United States. In 1820, an exploring party under Major Stephen Long followed the Platte Valley to the Rocky Mountains, as did an 1826 expedition under General William Ashley. By 1830, the valley had become the major supply route for fur traders in the Rocky Mountains. Beginning in 1847, the Mormons on their way to Utah followed a trail along the north side of the Platte. The Oregon Trail reached the Platte 150 miles west of here and followed the south side of the river. By the late 1850's, it was estimated that 90 per cent of all traffic which crossed the Plains, followed the Platte. The famous Pony Express followed the Platte Valley, as did the first transcontinental telegraph line. By 1869, the first transcontinental railroad was completed and it, too, followed the valley, opening the land along the river for permanent settlement. Historical Land Mark Council

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum — 5.2 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.
• Joslyn Art Museum — 21 mi
  Omaha's free art museum, a 1931 Art Deco memorial with two modern pavilions, and the keeper of Karl Bodmer's watercolors from the upper Missouri in 1833 and 1834.
• The Durham Museum (Omaha Union Station) — 21 mi
  Omaha's 1931 Union Station, Gilbert Stanley Underwood's Art Deco depot for the Union Pacific, closed to trains in 1971 and kept as a city museum with its waiting room intact.
• Malcolm X Birthsite — 22 mi
  The North Omaha lot where Malcolm Little was born in May 1925 and his family was driven out by the Klan, saved by Rowena Moore and now planned as a cultural center.

More markers nearby

• Prehistoric Burial Site — 4.1 mi
• Gretna Fish Hatchery — 4.7 mi
• The Ox-Bow Trail — 5.3 mi
• New Pennsylvania Cemetery — 5.5 mi