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Lower Plains: Kansas, Nebraska

dip as low as –20ºF (–29ºC). Also like Kansas, Nebraska has a history of tor- nadoes, floods, droughts, and dust storms. History Gold is what brought the first European explorers into the Plains region in the 16th century, when tall tales of treasure lured Coronado into present-day Kansas. Gold is also what brought the first large numbers of European Americans into Nebraska some 300 years later—gold in California mines more than a thou- sand miles away. When the precious metal was dis- covered in California in 1848, a rush of prospectors trekked across the country to seek their fortunes. Their route passed through Nebraska, fol- lowing the Platte River into the foothills of the Rockies. This was part of the eastern leg of the 2,000 mile (3,200 km) Oregon-California Trail. Wagons ferried tens of thousands of people across Nebraska. Supplies and freight moved up and down the Platte. These migrants, however, were pri-

A pioneer family is photographed with their wagon while traveling to their homestead in the Loup Valley of Nebraska, circa 1886.

marily interested in Nebraska as a transit route, not as a destination in its own right. Although the United States had acquired Nebraska from France in 1803 through the Louisiana Purchase, settlement was slow to get off the ground. By the time of the California Gold Rush, the area was still largely unsettled. Earlier in the century, the Missouri Fur Company had begun setting up trading posts along the Platte and Missouri rivers to trade with the Indians. In 1812, Spanish fur trapper