- Location
- Nebraska
- Current protection
- Samuel R. McKelvie National Forest, Nebraska National Forest, Valentine
- Status
- No active campaign
- Tier
- Tier 1 · National Park
- Undiscovered America
- Featured in the film and the book
Why should it be a National Park?
The sandhills of western Nebraska are one of the largest unknown, uncultivated, and unprotected areas of the country. They make up a quarter of all the land in Nebraska, a staggering 19,600-square-miles. Their total size is actually greater than that of nine states. The sandhills do not have the vertical grandeur that most people associate with our iconic natural wonders, but this landscape has a similar scale to the Everglades. This immense environment deserves our attention and admiration. To understand their appearance and size, picture the flowing sand dunes covering the Sahara Desert, now cover those dunes with a layer of prairie grass, and you have a general idea of the sandhills. Instead of waves of shifting sands, the landscape is an enormous series of yellow and green mounds that extend to every horizon. Like the nearby Badlands of South Dakota, this stretch of land was bypassed by settlers moving west, because it offered very little in the way of resources besides scenic beauty. Because of this avoidance, the bulk of the sandhills remain unaltered by humans.
Currently, only a tiny percentage of land has federal or state protection to conserve this impressive and ignored landscape, including Valentine, Crescent Lake, and Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuges, as well as sections of Samuel R. McKelvie and Nebraska National Forests. However, all of these areas combined results in the conservation of fewer than 400-square-miles, or roughly 2% of this forgotten landscape.
The history of National Park Campaigns
The Sandhills' only concrete federal "park-family" proposal was a scenic parkway, not a park; the Niobrara corridor absorbed the region's park energy and became a scenic river. The private ranch economy — not the park process — preserved the grassland.
- Distinct National Park attempts
- 0 clearly documented (the 1961–63 NPS prairie search and 2020 essay are the closest)
- Other designation attempts
- 2 (1965 Sandhills National Parkway concept; 1991 Niobrara National Scenic River)
Sources
- NPS online book, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve administrative history, ch. 3
- NPS Occasional Paper No. 7 (prairie identification)
- NPS Niobrara River Management Plan (2011)
- NPS 1965 Prairie–Great Plains Tourway study (RG 79)
- 1902 / 1908
Nebraska National Forest (Bessey division 1902; Niobrara division 1908, later Samuel R. McKelvie NF, 1971).
- 1912
Fort Niobrara NWR (19,131 acres).
- 1931 / 1935
Crescent Lake NWR; Valentine NWR.
- 1961–1963
NPS prairie-park search (considered Kansas and Nebraska sites) — part of the effort that ultimately produced Tallgrass Prairie designations elsewhere. (NPS online book, Tallgrass Prairie.)
- 1965
The NPS "Prairie–Great Plains Tourway" plan (a 1,400-mile route Oklahoma-to-Montana) proposes a 100-mile "Sandhills National Parkway" through central-northern Nebraska as one of three "National Parkway" segments (with the Great Prairie Parkway in the Flint Hills and a Sioux-Badlands Parkway). Never built. (NPS parkhistory online book, tapr_3.) The route survives as the Sandhills Journey Scenic Byway (NE-2).
- 1980
The Nature Conservancy's Niobrara Valley Preserve established.
- 1970s–1980s
Norden Dam fight; the 1980s NPS Niobrara study of alternatives leads to the scenic river rather than a park.
- May 24, 1991
Niobrara National Scenic River authorized (76 miles; ~29,101 acres of interest), championed by Sen. J.J. Exon and Rep. Doug Bereuter.
- 2020
A National Parks Traveler essay proposes a "Great Plains National Park" / Niobrara.
The National Park editorial by biology teacher James P. Jackson cited in the book has not been found.