Moominmama in Western Nebraska

In which Moominmama explores the Nebraska plains and its history along the Oregon trail...

Moominmama is parked in a municipal campground in Gothenburg, Nebraska, across from the Roping Club, which maintains the local rodeo ground and runs the annual rodeo each July. 

On arrival at the campground, I was invited to a fundraising supper for the Roping Club -- so I went. This gave me a chance to meet some Gothenburg locals who were interested to learn I'd come to visit because I once lived in their town's namesake, the city of Gothenburg (or Göteborg) Sweden. Plus I got advice on some places to see, including their local historical museum and a preserved Pony Express station in the center of town.

By the time I arrived at the historical museum the next morning, word had spread, and I was asked if I was the woman who'd come to the Roping Club supper the night before.

This is a small town in every sense of the word! (Population 3,500.) Exquisitely maintained lawns, farm fields and public parks betray a Swedish/German heritage in their orderliness. The local high school football team plays as the "Swedes."

Gothenburg, as I expected, was founded by a Swede, Olof Bergström in 1882, a railroad worker who thought the farmland along the Platte River was fertile and promising for a new farming community. He acquired several parcels then returned home to encourage his friends to join him. Many did, but in his absence, a group of Germans had moved in, attracted for the same reason. When they registered the town, they gave it the German spelling, Gothenburg, which it retains to this day. 

The different spellings haven't stopped the communities from forming a sister-cities relationship. In fact, a trio of Swedish journalists spent time in the community taking pictures and interviewing locals to create a coffee table book that tells the Swedes of Göteborg about their rural American cousins.

These were folks who arrived on the Nebraska plains, where trees were rare, and built houses out of sod, like this one to the left. To hold together, it must be built with true prairie grasses, like buffalo grass, because the intricate root structure holds the sod together, according to docents at the town's Sod Museum. The walls are nearly two-feet thick, which serves very successfully as insulation, though you had to mud the walls with clay and line the ceiling with muslin to keep dirt from falling inside.

For sure, I don't remember any sod houses or rodeos in Göteborg, which is Sweden's second largest city. There is however a prominent canal in both Göteborg and Gothenburg. In the latter case, it was dug along with a man-made lake to create water-powered electricity, one of the first Nebraska communities to have power, leading to an early industrial boom. 

Among the early companies (now defunct) was a maker of barbed wire. And the historical museum has a display of multiple dozens of barbed wire styles all labeled with their unique names by local collector Roy Farnstrom, who has since passed away.

In fact, the bison above, when I looked closely, was made of barbed wire! Furthermore, the Sod Museum features a plaque from the Nebraska Barbed Wire Collectors Association honoring Mr. Farnstrom, so he wasn't the only one. Who knew?

It has been great fun to learn about Gothenburg, which carries the moniker: the "Pony Express Capital of Nebraska." There are two surviving Pony Express stations, including one that was moved, board and beam, to the center of town to serve as a small museum. A second one, south of town, is on private property but remains along the original Oregon trail route.

Among the interesting characters whose story I learned at the museum is Bronco Charlie, who rode for the Pony Express at age 11. He took the risky work in stride and went on to live to 105.  At age 81, he rode from New York City to San Francisco to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the short-lived mail delivery business. As romanticized as the Pony Express has been in American history, it only lasted a year and a half, supplanted by the telegraph.

Not all of Nebraska's history is a tale of boot straps, ingenuity and success. This was a hard place to raise a family, and the small cemetery north of town with three Swedish crosses shows some of what was at stake.

These were made by the town's first blacksmith, a Swedish grandfather who memorialized the loss of his family's two infants and a toddler with these carefully crafted markers. Now fenced with a historical plaque, there's a small register that I pulled out to sign -- and found that someone had been there earlier this year who wrote that these babies were the brothers and sister of her grandfather, Lewis Berg. I found it heartening to learn this family had at least one surviving child, who prospered and had his own descendants.

By the time I got to Gothenburg, Moominmama had already seen some of the remnants of Oregon trail in far western Nebraska, having stopped outside the town of Scottsbluff.

This area gives lie to the myth that Nebraska is entirely flat. These bluffs, topped with a layer of limestone, eroded much more slowly than the surrounding plains and stood as a marker for western-bound travelers. They had finally made it across the Plains! But it also introduced them to the first of many major obstacles before they could get to the Pacific coast.

Here in Scottsbluff National Monument is the real prairie, almost a desert, with plants like the yucca and prairie grasses adapted to the lack of water. For families traveling in the mid-1800s, those conditions made staying close to the North Platte River essential. These bluffs and a badlands that blocks the south side of the river meant wagons either had to cross the river, a risky proposition, or detour around the bluffs through Robidoux Pass. 

Eventually, a second pass became more popular despite its narrowness. It was used by the Pony Express and ultimately preferred by other travelers because it was less of a detour from the river. Mitchell Pass is now where the Scottsbluff National Monument's visitor center stands, with a trio of covered wagons arrayed on the path of the Oregon Trail to give visitors a sense of the journey. The park service is also restoring and protecting native prairie grasses.

There is, of course, an extensive history of Native people here with many tribes who hunted bison on the plains and elk living among the bluffs. The Oregon trail, with all the oxen, mules and horses devouring prairie grasses en route, forced the bison to seek grass elsewhere. In this way, the Plains shrank as the European incursion grew. We all know how that ended for the bison and the tribes who relied on them.

For now, though, I'm appreciating the immense Nebraska sky and the challenges so many families faced to make a home in this harsh land. (The wind here is still fierce!) The lack of available farmland or other opportunities in Sweden drove much of the emigration to the U.S., and there's a well-known book "The Emigrants" by Swedish author Vilhelm Moberg (also made into a film) that describes the experience well. Next up, I head to the big city of Omaha to see yet another facet of Nebraska.