Secret Nebraska Sandhills

Where in Nebraska can people explore a Stonehenge-inspired sculpture made from old cars, watch the night sky from one of the darkest places on Earth, float downstream in a livestock water tank through a more-than-century-old cattle ranch, and dive into a bottomless spring that some say is impossible to sink into?

The Sandhills is an approximately 20,000-square-mile region of grass-stabilized sand dunes that cover one-quarter of the state of Nebraska. This is a grassland described both as a prairie sea and an ocean of grass, where cowboys still ride horses and ranch families know that if they are good to the land, the land will be good to them.

The rich history here blends with folklore tales of haunted hotels, unsolved murders, and ghost railroads—and cryptozoological oddities such as the Walgren Lake Monster and the Sandhills Monkey. Voices quiet when conversations turn to UFOs and extraterrestrials, and perhaps no Sandhiller has ever appeared more otherworldly than mythical Broken Bow resident Horace Easterwood who was pictured on the cover of a tabloid sporting a 40-inch horn growing from his head!

In Secret Nebraska Sandhills: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure, longtime Nebraskan storyteller and photographer Alan J. Bartels provides a one-of-a-kind look into the region’s lesser-known history and culture, discovered sometimes by accident but also through dogged research, and folklore, memories, and mythology shared by generous Sandhills residents.