Pine Ridge & the Northwest

This corner of Nebraska is Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne country, and the Pine Ridge Reservation lies just over the South Dakota line. US-20 follows the Pine Ridge escarpment west from Chadron to Crawford and Harrison, through ponderosa-covered buttes where bighorn sheep were first returned to the state in 1981. North of the ridge the land breaks into the badlands of the Oglala National Grassland; south of it the Niobrara runs through ranch country, and the land flattens east toward Alliance and the Sandhills.

In 1873 the Red Cloud Agency moved to the White River, and the army camp that guarded it became Fort Robinson. Crazy Horse surrendered there in May 1877 and was killed there that September, and in January 1879 Morning Star's Northern Cheyenne broke out of its barracks in subzero cold rather than be sent back south. Sixty-four of them were killed.

The region's other anchors run from deep time to the roadside: the clay toadstools of the grassland, the Agate fossil quarries and the gifts Red Cloud gave a ranching family he counted as friends, the Museum of the Fur Trade on the site of James Bordeaux's trading post, and Carhenge, a circle of gray cars in a field north of Alliance.

What to See in Pine Ridge & the Northwest

5 places across the region, grouped by what they are.

Scenic Drives through Pine Ridge & the Northwest

Stories from Pine Ridge & the Northwest

Pine Ridge & the Northwest rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.