20 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2011 NOVEMBER 2011 • NEBRASKALAND 21

By Lisa Knopp

In her essay “The Overlook,” NEBRASKAland contributor Lisa Knopp takes a look atsome of the historical scenes that might have been viewed throughout history from

atop a Nebraska City bluff.

I’d had a good, though hot, hike over the Meadow Trailat the Missouri River Basin Lewis and Clark InterpretiveCenter near Nebraska City. I’d seen some of the same

flora and fauna that Lewis and Clark had seen when theycamped in the area in 1804: Monarch butterflies driftedabove the switchgrass, goldenrod and milkweed. Turkey vultures drifted high overhead on an updraft. On the trailwas a wild turkey that had been torn to pieces. The tracks ofwhite-tailed deer were pressed into the trails.

After my meadow stroll, I followed the River OverlookTrail through the woods to the edge of the cliff. I had long

admired this bluff above the Missouri whenever I passed iton Highway 2. To commemorate the bicentennial of theexpedition of Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discoveryin 2004, the National Park Service built an interpretive center devoted to the Corps’ scientific discoveries atop thebluff. A brilliant placement. Through an opening in the trees190 feet above the river, I could see the chain of dark,wrinkled loess hills in the far distance; between the hills andthe river a wide floodplain, and the fast, glinting river. Onthe Iowa shore, three people fished. At the bottom of thewooded bluff on which I stood were railroad tracks.

As I sat at the overlook and watched the river, Iimagined what a drastically different landscape Iwould have seen from this vantage point in earliertimes. Assuming, of course, that it actually existedin these time periods, from the overlook ...

... during the Pleistocene Epoch, approximately 2.5 million to 12,000 thousand years ago, I wouldhave seen the advance and retreat of the great continental ice sheets. Later the river cut a valleythrough gravels, sands and other debris that the glaciers left behind.

... I could have observed how the landscapeevolved as the climate changed from humid subtropical forests to savannas and open grasslands.Mammoths, mastodons, ground sloth, musk ox,camels and other exotic animals roamed the area;nomadic, spear-hurling hunters followed. In theeighteenth century, the Otoe, Siouan people fromthe Great Lakes, arrived in skin boats. They lived inearth lodges, grew corn near the river and huntedbison on the prairie.

... I could have watched the Corps of Discoverypass by in their keelboat and pirogues. On July 18,1804, they camped south of Nebraska City; on July19, they camped a few miles upstream in FremontCounty, Iowa. “This is the most open country I everbeheld,” Clark wrote on the 18th. Today Clarkwould find old cottonwoods instead of groves ofsaplings on the floodplain, fields of corn and beans,“bound less” highways, a cluster of truck stops and,on the west bank of the Missouri, a town of about7,200 people.

... a few years after the Corps passed by, I couldhave watched northbound keelboats loaded with

The Overlook

beads, rifles, knives, sugar, alcohol, cloth, tools and othersupplies and trade goods. On the return trip, the barges borebales of beaver pelts, which hatters fashioned into soft,durable top hats, then the rage. When the fashion trendsshifted from beaver to silk hats a decade later, the fur tradersshifted to different prey: bison, whose hides were cut intolap or bed covers, as well as the hides and pelts of fox, otterand mink.

... in the 1830s, I could have watched Nebraska Citians –some frightened, some curious – gather to watch boats withwater-churning paddlewheels and tall, smoke-belching,steam-spouting smokestacks. Soon steamboats were common,welcome sights on the Missouri. Some carried as many as500 passengers and several hundred tons of cargo.

... I could have watched John Boulware ferrying troopsand supplies between old Fort Kearney (originally established near the Nebraska City overlook in 1847) and areservation on the Iowa shore. In the 1860s and 1870s, twosteamboats, the Capitola Butt and the Lizzy Campbell,shuttled people, cattle and wagons between East Port, Iowa,and Nebraska City.

... I could have watched federal officials, territorial officialsand the chiefs of the four affiliated bands of the Pawneecome to Nebraska City in 1857 to put their signature or X on the Treaty of Table Rock. One of the officials at theTreaty of Table Rock was J. Sterling Morton. What mostpeople remember him for is that in 1872, he founded Arbor

Day, a holiday that encourages people to plant trees, whetherthey are appropriate for the local ecosystem or not. In his“Fruit Address” to the Nebraska State Historical Society thatyear, Morton declared his goal as nothing short of makingNebraska our nation’s “best-timbered state.” While that goalwas never achieved, Nebraska City is certainly one of thestate’s “best-timbered” towns.

... I could have watched packet boats bound for NebraskaCity. Once they docked, workers unloaded the crates andbarrels of food, whiskey, tools, guns and ammunition andloaded them onto bull-wagons. The wagons headed west onthe Overland Trail or south on the Santa Fe Trail, carrying supplies to emigrants and military forts. Nebraska City grew

the roadway and pedestrian paths with short, evenly spacedposts on either side but no railings. The grand opening was afestive occasion. Women in long white dresses stand near thetollbooth on the Nebraska side; three men raise a flag; aparade of horse-drawn buggies and pedestrians cross thebridge from East Port. In 1891, the CB&Q laid planks besidethe tracks so people could drive over the railroad bridge inwagons and buggies, though not at the same time as thetrain. This bridge served until 1930 when the Waubonsietruss bridge, built by the Kansas City Bridge Company,opened to non-railroad traffic. Each “invention” – ferry,pontoon bridge, transfer bridge, railroad bridge, truck andauto bridge – brought the two shores closer together andmade the river more passable.

... I could have watched people break the prairie, cut theriverine forests, and drain the wetlands. With each passingdecade, I could have watched the number of bison, wolves,bald eagles, pallid sturgeons, river otters, false map turtles,bobcats, terns, plovers, regal fritillaries, western fringedprairie orchids, and other native species decline and thenumber of house sparrows, pheasants, Asian carp, purpleloosestrife, Eurasian mussels, rusty crayfish, Russian olives,Bradford pears, buckthorn, gypsy moths, bluegrass, brownsnails, Tree-of-Heaven and other non-native species increase.And, with each passing decade, there were more and morepeople.

... I could have watched as the U.S. Army Corps ofEngineers (the Corps) turned the once wild river, whoseforces of erosion and deposition and seasonal variations inflow continuously reshaped the channel and floodplain,into a relatively controlled and predictable river. A plaqueat the overlook explains that in 1927, the Corps begandredging the Lower Missouri – that stretch of riverbetween Sioux City, Iowa, and St. Louis – to create achannel that was six feet deep and 200 feet wide. In 1945,the Corps expanded the channel so that it was 300 feet

wide and nine feet deep, in order to control flooding andmake the Missouri safe for barges. In spite of these measures, the river rose far over its banks in 1952, 1967,1978, 1993 and the record-breaking flood of 2011.

... I could have watched the construction of the four-laneNebraska City Bridge that opened in 1986 and the demolitionof the old Waubonsie Bridge. The Nebraska City Bridge carries tourists to the Apple Jack Festival, an annual celebration of the apple harvest in September, my favoritesmall-town festival; to tour Morton’s grandiose Arbor Lodgeand arboretum and the unassuming Mayhew cabin; to hikeand explore the exhibits at the Missouri River Basin Lewisand Clark Interpretive Center or to sit at the overlook andwatch time and the river. And the bridge carries people tojobs and shopping and home again as well as those just passing through.

I take a last look at the murky, brown river, the hillsbeyond and several millennia of river-shaping and river-shaped history. I follow the Limestone Bluff Trail throughthe woods and emerge north of the interpretive center. ThereI see an emblematic scene: a row of burr oak saplings, anative tree; an earth lodge, like those that the Otoe oncelived in; in the distance, massive grain elevators and the tallbridge girders. Cars and trucks zing past on Highway 2.Suddenly, my attention is pulled in close: a turkey hen crosses the path about ten feet in front of me; several ganglychicks follow. They are not alarmed by my presence. Theylinger, foraging in the native and introduced plants near thetrail, and then disappear into the woods. ■

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to support the freighters with boarding houses, saloons, bootshops, warehouses, wagon shops, whip-makers, blacksmithsand foundries. By 1860, the population of this wild, westerntown had grown to 1,922. By 1870, it had more than tripledto 6,050. A Nebraska State Historical Society photographfrom 1860 shows a muddy street crowded with covered wagons and a couple dozen long-horned oxen. About adozen men and boys stand before or lean against the brickstorefronts as they watch the commotion in the street.

... I could have watched slaves, slave owners and abolitionists crossing the Missouri. Abolitionists guidedslaves from Missouri through Kansas and to the MayhewCabin, a station on the Underground Railroad that was locatedin Nebraska City. There they hid fugitives in the cabin and,as legend has it, in underground tunnels and a cave nearTable Creek until they could be concealed in cargo and ferried across the river after dark.

... I could have watched billowing smoke rise above thetrees. On May 12, 1860, a fire started in Coleman’s butchershop. Since it was a windy day during a dry spring, the firespread quickly along Sixth Street and Main (now CentralAvenue) to houses and 38 businesses, including the postoffice, the U.S. Land Office, all of Otoe County’s offices, abank, two drugstores, a hotel, a dentist’s office, threesaloons, a bowling alley, a stable, a barber shop and twoboot shops. The following year, Nebraska City organized itsfirst volunteer firefighters. In the 1870s and 1880s, the fire-damaged buildings on Main and Sixth Streets were replacedwith the two-story brick buildings that now line those streets.

... I could have watched the train stop in East Port, where

the J.S. Joy, a railroad transfer boat, waited. After crossingthe Missouri, the train was reassembled in Nebraska City,the passengers re-boarded, and continued their journey. TheChicago, Burlington and Quincy (CB&Q) Railroad put theJoy out of business when it built a steel trestle bridge overthe Missouri in 1888.

... I could have watched workers piece together more than100 flatboats, upon which they built a plank road and apedestrian path, also in 1888. This floating link was 24.5 feetwide; with the cribwork approach on either side, it was morethan 2000 feet long. The cable-operated, V-shaped mid-section,the apex of which pointed downstream, could be opened toprovide passage for boats and barges. A Nebraska StateHistorical Society photo of the newly opened bridge shows

22 NEBRASKALAND • NOVEMBER 2011

Lisa Knopp is an award-winning Americanessayist and author of introspective short stories,essays and creative nonfiction. She teachescreative nonfiction at UN-O and has beencontributing to NEBRASKAland since 1992.

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