In the beginning, there were the rolling hills, the ample creeks, and the lush grasslands that sprawled as far as the horizon. When the Van Newkirk family first arrived in Western Nebraska in 1886 and was granted land through the Homestead Act, they thought they had found paradise.
Surprisingly little has changed over a century later. Massive chunks of these regions, called the Nebraska Sandhills, are still virtually untouched. No one on record has ever tried to farm here, and very few have settled.
