The Nebraska Panhandle – really a part of Wyoming
I’ve always maintained that the Nebraska Panhandle, where I’m from, is not in the Midwest. Omaha, where I went to college – total Midwestern city. You could change whole parts of it out with Cincinnati and no one would even notice. Scottsbluff, my hometown – more like Cheyenne.
By geography, climate, and culture, the Panhandle has practically nothing in common with the Midwest. A hundred times more Wyoming than Ohio.
Now I’ve got the map to prove it:
See? See?
The only real link – other than all those bothersome laws and institutions – that western Nebraska has to the rest of the state is our beloved Husker football team. I’d take them even if we seceded. Which probably wouldn’t be a bad idea. I doubt they’d miss the Panhandle back in Omaha, and I’m sure we wouldn’t miss them.
In the 1890s the residents of the Panhandle threatened to join Wyoming if the water laws didn’t get changed. They were foiled then, but the idea was vetted again in the 80s. It went nowhere again. Damn easterners.
Nonetheless, out here the term “Wyobraska” has persisted. Katie Bradshaw has a pretty good run-down on how that term is more common in the Scottsbluff phonebook than, well, Scottsbluff.
I should clarify that I now live in the eastern Wyoming part of Wyobraska, enjoying the various advantages of Wyoming life (no income tax, a state capital that is not 450 miles away, no associations with the Midwest … no income tax). I’d just like my brethren across the border to share in the wealth, too.
I should add, too, that the above map, while starting in the right direction, includes way too much of the east. This is the Panhandle. Everything else is just Back East:
Look how neatly the Panhandle would fit onto Wyoming. They wouldn't even notice we were gone!
Court Merrigan
Great little essay, Court.
As a lifelong citizen of NORTHERN Virginia, I really like that map of the perceptual regions. In terms of enlightenment, Richmond might as well not even be on the same planet.
Methinks the folks in West Virginia had the right idea in breaking away from Virginia.
Here across the Potomac River from D.C., most people don’t own any slaves, either, even if Richmond at times acts as it is still the Confederate capital.
David
It’s interesting that Northern Virginia along with a swath of the north and east has NO regional affiliation … seems a bit strange? No regional affiliation at all?
Actually we’re the part of North America ruled by Satan. We just keep it a secret from the Red States–hence, no information on affiliation in any sense of the word.
Ah – now it’s coming clear.
fun!
Well to start off with bud i live in the Wyobraska area. Id have to disagree with the panhandle breaking off into Wyoming at least currently with all the issues arising. It would make just much more sence for the state as a whole to re assert its sovergnty from the Federal govt.
and @David. if you were to re read actual fact history, such as cencus info from the 1860s in your area im sure you would find that there were as many as 50k free black men living in the south pre war. aproximately i think 6% of southern black men owned slaves themselves.
And that President Lincoln actullaly had a troop and supply buildup at sumtner a week or so before the confederates fired on it . which this buildup of supply would have been considered an act of war or opression comming to the south by what they saw as a tyrannical govt.
Furthermore Lincoln asserted several times that he did not invade the south to free slaves.
Dont get me wrong, i do not support slavery of any ppl or race… esp through our own current enslavement of excessive taxation. There is a reason why Obama has been labeled as polarizing as Lincoln. And that statement scares the livin shit outa me.
@Ty, of course it’s a pipe dream to have the Panhandle break off from the rest of the state, but out of curiousity, what “issues” are you referring to?
Great article! I’m originally from Alliance, Nebraska and my family homesteaded around Marsland and Crawford in the 1880s. This is a topic that I’ve discussed with my grandmother, born in Nonpareil, Nebraska (which doesn’t exist any longer). The topic of culture has been the center piece of this discussion within my family. The largest complaint is that the people in Lincoln and Omaha have no concept of life in the Panhandle.
Life in Alliance was more like that of my friends who grew up in Torrington than it does people I’ve met from Holdridge, Hastings, Blair, or Columbus. Wyobraska would put people in the “old west” together in the same state, instead of a Midwestern culture dominating over the “old west” in the Panhandle.
I always tell my friends here in Denver that my hometown is more like Denver and Cheyenne than it is Lincoln or Omaha.
Jarrod, thanks for stopping by. I agree completely with you that, culturally, Wyobraska and back east have very little in common. The Panhandle of Nebraska is not the Midwest. Too bad we can’t get that recognized on a map.
Wasn’t there a sort of revival of the Panhandle secession movement in the 1990s? I don’t think it was a very serious proposal but it seems that stories appeared on the AP wires regarding such activity.
I believe there was one, but it evidently didn’t go very far.
Dear Court, you are amazing. This is the info I needed for a story set in the panhandle and the sandhills! You are right in saying that people “out there” don’t feel like they belong in Nebraska. I went to Chadron in Feb 2011 and granted they’re not used to tourists in the winter but the receptionist at the desk asked me where I was from and when I said, Lincoln, her face changed considerably. She was no longer nice and viewed me with suspicion the rest of the time I was there. It really felt weird. But I didn’t feel that way in Alliance in Feb 2012.
I remember when I came back from college in Omaha and my care had “1″ county plates (this was before Omaha changed over to that new system they’ve got now) and the reception at the gas station in Lewellen where I always stopped was noticably more frosty, so I don’t doubt it a bit. On the other hand, I think lots of folks also just don’t care.
What’s this story you’re working on, if you don’t mind me asking?