Rooted in the Plains

On July 29th, 1867, three men sat down in a private home in Lancaster, Nebraska,  a settlement of fewer than fifty people and voted to make it the capital of the state. Twenty-two years later, that same ground was home to fifty thousand people, seventy factories, eighty wholesale houses, and thirty-one miles of streetcar track.

In this episode, I take you on a walk starting at the spot where it began, then through Lincoln's Hay...

For thirteen years, two sides of the Platte River fought over the same prize: Nebraska's capital city. The stakes weren't just political — whoever held the capital held the federal payroll, the railroad route, and the future. Omaha had won every fight. Then statehood changed everything.

In this episode, we follow the fight from its rigged beginnings in 1854, through legislative brawls, land schemes, and a midnight wagon heist,...

The cowboy myth says it was all grit and open range: noble ranchers, hardworking cowhands, civilizing a wild frontier. The truth is messier.

In this episode, we trace who actually ran Wyoming in the late 1800s, and the answer isn't "cowboys." It's a railroad, a small circle of cattle barons, and two senators, nicknamed "the Cheyenne Ring", who answered to both at once. We follow the Wyoming Stock Growers Association's reach across s...

 The fort is still standing. And so are the people who keep its story alive. 

In the final episode of our Fort Atkinson summer series, we go to the source: the volunteers who show up on the first weekend of every month, put on the uniforms, and bring the 1820s back to life for everyone who walks through the gates. 

A soldier. A blacksmith. A tinsmith. A weaver. And Andrew, our guide through this whole series, is back o...

Summer Season Episode 2

Last week, we left you on a bluff above the Missouri River. November 1819. A Nebraska winter is closing in. Something about to go very, very wrong.

 In Part 2 of our Fort Atkinson series, we hear the story from the inside. Through the journal entries of our soldier stationed at the fort in the winter of 1819–1820, we follow the crisis as it unfolds and what would take 157 men before spring arrived.

&...

Summer Season Episode 1

On a bluff above the Missouri River, 200 miles from the nearest American settlement, the United States built its largest military post in 1819. Nearly a thousand people called it home: soldiers, officers, families. They were sent to project American power into the frontier, hold back British fur traders, and keep the peace with the surrounding nations: the Pawnee, the Omaha, the Sioux, the Arikara. 

In th...

Two years ago, I took a walk around a lake. The tallgrass was moving in the wind, and if I was lucky, a red-winged blackbird. That's where this podcast started.

In this episode, I close out Season 2, eight episodes across the Great Plains, from South Dakota to Oklahoma and look ahead to what's coming next. I share a bit about how Rooted in the Plains got started and where I want to see it go. Including something I'm really excited a...

Every episode leaves something on the research desk. The details that didn't quite fit. The rabbit holes that led somewhere unexpected. The questions the records wouldn't answer.

Today we're opening the files.

In this episode, we go back to three stories from Season 2, the ones I couldn't stop thinking about long after the microphone was off. A Nebraska son hired to evaluate the Carnegie library program, who told an uncomfortable tru...

Before the plow broke the prairie, the prairie was already a library. Every plant had a name. Every name carried a use. Every use carried a story.

In this episode, we explore the deep relationship between the peoples of the Great Plains and the plant life they had cultivated, tended, and understood for centuries. From the sacred cottonwood along the river bottoms to the purple coneflower in your supplement aisle, the knowledge was a...

Note: This episode opens with a gunshot sound effect. 

On September 16, 1893, a gun was fired at noon, and 100,000 people surged across the Oklahoma plains in the largest land run in American history. Within 2 hours, 6.5 million acres were claimed. Cities appeared overnight. The frontier, they said, was finally settled.

But a young Tonkawa woman was already there, lying flat in the grass at the edge of her family's field, feelin...

In 1876, Chinese immigrants arrived in Deadwood, South Dakota, building restaurants, laundries, medical practices, and a temple that smelled of incense from a block away. By 1880, there were over 200 - possibly 400. But then the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 changed everything.

In this episode, we explore how a thriving community faced systematic legal persecution - yet refused to disappear. We'll meet Wong Fee Lee, who became the f...

Between 1901 and 1922, Andrew Carnegie funded 69 libraries across Nebraska, giving the state the second-highest per capita rate of Carnegie libraries in the nation. But why Nebraska?

In this episode, we explore how women's clubs, a newly formed state Library Commission, and Carnegie's millions transformed Nebraska from having just 26 libraries to over 120 in two decades. We'll meet Belle Stoughtenborough, who traveled the state prea...

Content Warning: This episode discusses historical violence, including domestic violence, murder, and attempted suicide. While not graphic, sensitive listeners may want to be aware before listening.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves walked into his boss's office for his next assignment, a murder warrant. When Marshal Leo Bennett saw the suspect's name, he hesitated. "Maybe another deputy should handle this one, Bass." The name on the ...

In the 1890s, Great Plains farmers faced a problem: they desperately needed telephones, but the Bell Telephone Company thought rural areas were too expensive and unsophisticated to serve. So, farmers built their own system—using barbed wire fences. By 1920, these homemade networks had made farmers more connected than city dwellers. This is the story of whiskey bottle insulators, party line eavesdropping, and how the devil's r...

In this Season 2 premiere of Rooted in the Plains, we will explore how the Great Plains states chose their official symbols, flowers, birds, trees, and insects. From the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago to grassroots campaigns by women's clubs, discover the surprising stories behind these emblems of state identity.

Learn why five states chose the same bird, how Montana kids voted for their state tree 41 years before the legislature acte...

The Pawnee people have long looked at the sky for guidance, meaning and connection. In this episode, Matt Reed, the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Pawnee Nation, shares stories of ceremony and tradition that tie the Pawnee to the stars, moon and storms.

See photos, maps, and glimpses of prairie life on Instagram: @rootedintheplains

*Part one of a two-part series exploring the stories and science of the Great Plains sky....

The sky tells its story in many ways through observation, science and technology. In this episode, Dr. Randy Peppler from the University of Oklahoma explores how meteorology and Indigenous environmental knowledge intersect across the Great Plains and how listening to both reveal a deeper understanding of place and weather. 

See photos, maps, and glimpses of prairie life on Instagram: @rootedintheplains

*Part two of a two-part se...

Nebraska is far from the ocean, but the land remembers water. More than 100 million years ago, it was the floor of a vast inland sea, and its salt still lingers in the marshes around Lincoln.

In this episode, we trace how salt shaped Nebraska’s history, from the Otoe, Omaha, and Pawnee who gathered crystals for trade and food, to settlers who dreamed of a booming salt industry, to the rare plants and the tiny, fierce Salt Cree...

From gunfights at Rock Creek to hot peaches at Liberty Farm, this episode traces the short but powerful run of the Pony Express. Though it lasted just 18 months, its mark across Nebraska endures, from relay stations and home stops to the towns and trails that grew in its wake. 

You’ll hear stories from Rock Creek Station, where a deadly conflict launched the legend of Wild Bill Hickok. Liberty Farm, a cozy home station, l...