Scotts Bluff & the Panhandle
Chimney Rock, Scotts Bluff and Mitchell Pass, Ash Hollow and the 1855 Blue Water massacre site, the Wildcat Hills, and Panorama Point in a bison pasture.
The southern Panhandle was Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho hunting ground, and for a driver it splits in two. The North Platte valley carries US-26 and NE-92 past the landmarks the emigrant trains steered by: Chimney Rock, then Scotts Bluff, where the wagons squeezed single file through Mitchell Pass. To the south, I-80 and the old Union Pacific line cross a high, dry tableland through Sidney and Kimball toward the Wyoming line.
At the east end of the valley, Ash Hollow was the trail's sweet spring at the foot of Windlass Hill. Six miles northwest, on September 3, 1855, General William Harney's soldiers attacked Little Thunder's Sicangu Lakota camp on Blue Water Creek and killed eighty-six people, many of them women and children. For more than a century it was written up as the Battle of Ash Hollow. In September 2025, sixty-nine belongings taken from the camp came back from the Smithsonian to the park's visitor center for Little Thunder's descendants.
Between the river and the plateau, the pine-dark Wildcat Hills hold bighorn sheep and mountain lions that returned after a century's absence. In the far southwest corner, Nebraska's highest ground is a gentle rise in a bison pasture, a little over a mile from where three states meet.
What to See in Scotts Bluff & the Panhandle
7 places across the region, grouped by what they are.
Geology & Rock Formations
Natural Areas
Historic Sites
Roadside Stops
Scenic Drives through Scotts Bluff & the Panhandle
Stories from Scotts Bluff & the Panhandle
Scotts Bluff & the Panhandle rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.
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