The wild and woolly first years of the Nebraska Territory is the subject of Nebraska historian Jeff Barnes’s presentation of “The Queen’s Road: Nebraska’s Bumpy Ride to Statehood” at the Bellevue Public Library on Thursday, August 15, at 6:30 p.m. The program is sponsored by Humanities Nebraska.
Barnes’s talk covers the transitional years of the Nebraska Territory, as its borders shrunk but its national significance increased. Its Platte River Valley was more important than ever for commerce, communication, and transportation, while federal policies increased its role as a battleground between Native and Euro-American peoples.
“Nebraska’s Civil War years were also the footnote setting for unique happenings in history,” says Barnes, “including the first killing by an unknown Bill Hickok and the running of the first self-powered vehicle for the hauling of wagons across the Plains. Our place in history also found us as the first state to join the Union over a presidential veto.” The presentation includes many historic images, maps and anecdotes in the telling of Nebraska’s sometimes shaky trek to statehood.
A former newspaper reporter and editor, Barnes writes and lives in Omaha and is the first Humanities Nebraska presenter to speak in all 93 counties. He is a former board trustee with the Nebraska State Historical Society, past chairman of the Nebraska Hall of Fame Commission, and trustee with the Union Pacific Museum Association. He is a twice-awarded recipient of the Nebraska Book Award and the author of Cut in Stone, Cast in Bronze: Nebraska’s Historical Markers and Monuments, 150 @ 150: Nebraska’s Landmark Buildings at the State’s Sesquicentennial, The Great Plains Guide to Custer, and Extra Innings: The Story of Modisett Ball Park. A new edition of his first book, Forts of the Northern Plains, was published in May by the University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books.