Nebraska National Forest, Bessey Ranger District

Charles E. Bessey, a University of Nebraska botanist, believed the Sandhills had once carried forest and could again, and he wanted to show that timber could be grown on the treeless plains. With Gifford Pinchot's help he persuaded President Theodore Roosevelt to set aside forest reserves in the Sandhills, and in 1902 a nursery opened here on the Middle Loup as part of the Dismal River Forest Reserve. In the first half of the century crews planted nearly 30,000 acres of ponderosa pine, jack pine, eastern red cedar and other trees, and the forest they left, about 20,000 acres, is described as the largest human-planted forest in the United States.

The timber industry Bessey imagined never came. Sandy roads defeat heavy logging equipment, and the district thins its own stands. The trees have had a hard century. A 1965 fire killed about a third of the forest, the jack pines are dying naturally at around 80 years old, and red cedar is spreading into the grassland. On October 2, 2022, the Bovee Fire burned about 15,000 acres, the Scott Lookout Tower and most of the Nebraska State 4-H Camp. Mike Moody, 59, assistant chief of the Purdum Volunteer Fire Department, died during the initial attack.

The Charles E. Bessey Nursery, on the National Register of Historic Places, still grows seedlings for Forest Service land in neighboring states. Beside it the Bessey Recreation Complex has campsites, a stocked fish pond, river access and trails, and in spring blinds for watching prairie grouse dance on their leks.