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The Nebraska Sandhills

Aerial view of cattle grazing on grass-covered dunes.
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Cover of "The Nebraska Sandhills."

The Nebraska Sandhills features nearly forty essays about the history, people, geography, geology, ecology, and conservation of the Nebraska Sandhills.

Illustrated with hundreds of remarkable color photographs of the area, this is the most up-to-date and illuminating portrayal of this remarkable yet largely unknown region of the United States.

Dedicated to all persons, past and present, who have lived and traveled the Nebraska Sandhills. Our hope for the region’s future rests with those who respect its unique land and spirit.

The authors humbly and specifically acknowledge that the Nebraska Sandhills are situated within the ancestral and current homelands of a number of Indigenous nations, including but not limited to the Pawnee, Ponca, Omaha, Dakota, Lakota, Nakota, Arapaho, and Cheyenne Nations.

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Part 2

Land

Aerial photo looking northwest at Hackberry Lake, Valentine National Wildlife Refuge, Cherry County. The lake is surrounded by 90- to 165-foot-high barchan and barchanoid ridge dunes with abundant healed blowouts.

Part 3

Water

Aerial photo showing the braiding channel of Birdwood Creek.

Part 8

Future of the Sandhills

Sunrise at Cottonwood-Steverson Wildlife Management Area, Cherry County.

“Like a rumpled wool blanket, the Nebraska Sandhills spreads out over twenty thousand square miles of north central Nebraska and is the largest stabilized dune field in the Western Hemisphere. It is also the largest intact mixed-grass prairie left on the continent.”

This description by photographer Michael Forsberg alludes to the exceptional physical geography of the Nebraska Sandhills, a place of rolling grasslands, rivers, and wetlands created by the Ogallala Aquifer that underlies the region.

The Sandhills on a sunny, early fall day.