As to scenery, while I know that the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara Falls, the Upper Yellowstone and the like afford the greatest natural shows, I am not so sure but the prairies and plains, while less stunning at first sight, last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede all the rest, and make North America’s characteristic landscape.
—Walt Whitman, Specimen Days (1879)
Walt Whitman probably never visited the Nebraska Sandhills, but if he had, I can only imagine what he might have thought, leaning into the wind atop a three-hundred-foot-high dune covered in a thick hide of sand bluestem and Indian grass, listening to the whistle of an upland sandpiper or watching a kettle of cranes contemplating their descent above a lonely prairie lake.
The Nebraska Sandhills is an iconic grassland landscape, cradles a diversity of prairie wildlife, and sits squarely in the middle of our nation, yet until recently few outside the region even knew its name. In 2011 this sparsely populated region was thrust onto the national stage when the proposed Keystone XL pipeline route that would carry tar sands oil from Alberta to Texas made the evening news. The route was set to cross the eastern flank of the Sandhills but met fierce resistance from ranchers and environmental activists. After months of intense debate, industry shrugged, the route was redrawn farther to the east, and the project eventually halted, tabled by Washington.
Like a rumpled wool blanket, the Sandhills spreads out over 19,300 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 and covers the deepest part of the Ogallala Aquifer—the holy grail of the High Plains.
Here, when rains fall and snows melt, water soaks into the hills like a sponge, percolating through sandy soils to feed lush grassy valleys between the dunes, recharging the aquifer that in turn infuses countless wetlands, lakes, and streams.
During its brief geologic history, the Sandhills was a place of shifting sands, shaped by periods of prolonged droughts, pulses of bison, and Plains Indian tribes, like the Pawnee and Sioux, who used it for communal hunting grounds. Since Euro-American settlement, a strong cattle ranching tradition and careful land stewardship have kept the fragile soil in place, creating perhaps some of the best-managed grazing land in the world, and nearly all of it in private ownership. Though the human culture has changed, the integrity of grass has in large measure remained.
Despite its natural bounty, few people outside this geography have ever seen golden late-day light rake across wine-colored hills in October or heard the booming of prairie-chickens on frost-covered dancing grounds during an April dawn. Nor have they witnessed waterfalls that tumble over prairie ledges or through hidden forested canyons, or floated Sandhills rivers that carve their signatures in the landscape with names like the Niobrara, Dismal, and Snake.
In the depths of winter, powerful springs form pockets of open water and shelter wintering flocks of trumpeter swans, Canada geese, and mergansers. On summer days, shallow lakes reflect massive cloud towers and nesting colonies of grebes. In the prairie uplands grassland birds, like meadowlarks and long-billed curlews, make their ground nests, and windmill stock tanks harbor nurseries of amphibians, including tiger salamanders and leopard frogs. At night a party of stars gather in one of the darkest skies left in the Lower 48.
Our world’s temperate grasslands have cradled civilizations for millennia. With rich soils and gentle topography, they are our world’s breadbaskets and increasingly our energy pumps. Intact, they sequester massive amounts of carbon, filter our water, control soil erosion, and hold reservoirs of pollinators and biodiversity. But today they are considered the most altered and least protected biome on Earth, a victim of their natural wealth and overlooked for their beauty.
In North America’s Great Plains, roughly half of our grasslands are converted to agriculture. According to the World Wildlife Fund Plowprint Report, since 2009, 53 million more acres of Great Plains grasslands (roughly the size of Kansas) have been plowed up, encouraged by a complex soup of agricultural policies, commodity pricing, and Farm Bill politics that somehow still encourage and subsidize conversion of grassland, even on marginal lands. The Nebraska Sandhills are not immune.
A few years ago, against the backdrop of severe drought, the march of conversion from grassland to cornfield continued even within the Sandhills perimeter. To its west, rumors circulate that a thirsty Denver and its sprawling population along the Front Range is carefully eyeballing the wealth of water that lies beneath the Sandhillers’ feet. Now, once-dormant pipeline proposals may be revisited, and future Farm Bills will set agriculture policies. The future of these grasslands is uncertain.
So for now the Sandhills and its fragile kingdom of grass remain intact. The magic of water still spills forth from hidden contours in the sand, the valleys are still green and alive with birdsong, and the Sandhills prairie and its citizenry remain resilient. It is time to pull the curtain back on this unique landscape in the heart of the Great Plains so it can serve as an emblem of beauty, diversity, and hope for all native grasslands that still remain.