Nebraska: A History

Frugal but generous, stubborn but innovative, trusting but cautious, Nebraskans are a people who chose to live in a harsh, semiarid land, from which they coaxed abundance. They may be, writes author Dorothy Weyer Creigh, the last of their kind.

Nebraskans have been tied to the land, and their history, as much as that of any state, is a story of interdependence between people and place. As the "Great Highway" to somewhere else--California and Oregon--Nebraska was marked by the tracks and wago...