Nebraska Sand hills

Steven Dutch, Professor Emeritus, Natural and Applied Sciences, Universityof Wisconsin - Green Bay


Nebraska has an 80-mile stretch of Interstate that is dead straight and level.You can put a penny on the ground at the Grand Island end and read the date from Lincoln. However, once you get off the Interstate there is some surprisingly interesting scenery in Nebraska.

About a quarter of Nebraska is covered by the Sand hills, so called because the hills are entirely made of - now let's not always see the same hands - sand.Whoever said "sand" gets ten minutes of unfiltered Internet time after class. The Sand hills are Pleistocene sand dunes derived from glacial outwash eroded from the Rockies, and now (mostly) stabilized by vegetation.

Nebraska Sand hills 

The map below shows the core of the Sand hills. Note the general absence of drainage over much of the region and the numerous tiny lakes. Much of what passes for lakes in Nebraska consists of closed depressions between dunes.

Nebraska Sand hills 

Below is a representative patch of Sand hills topography. Note that some dunes are barchan-like, although they are far larger and more crowded than typical barchans. Also note the small ponds between dunes. This area is about100 km southeast of Alliance on the map above.

Nebraska Sand hills

Aerial Views

When you live in the Midwest, any trip west has a good chance of passing overthe Sand hills.

Transverse Dunes 

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Barchan-Like Dunes

Barchans are crescent-shaped dunes with the horns of the crescents pointingdownwind. They are typically small, normally form where sand is sparse, and tendto be widely spaced. These dunes in the Sand hillsare crowded, obviously hadlots of sand, and are over a kilometer long, but they resemble barchans morethan anything else.

Nebraska Sand hills Left and below: large barchan-like dunes. Note the small inter-dune ponds.
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Nebraska Sand hills  

Other Dune Forms

Nebraska Sand hills Left and below: irregular dunes with small-scale longitudinal dunes superimposed.
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Nebraska Sand hills Left and below: longitudinal dunes
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Nebraska Sand hills Although this looks like a sheet of clouds, it's a winter photo of the Sand hillscovered with snow. 
Nebraska Sand hills Similar topography just east of the photo above. The location can be found on the maps. The three forking streams are just north of Nebraska Route 2 about halfway between Thedford and Alliance.
Nebraska Sand hills Transverse dunes with small-scale longitudinal dunes superimposed.
Nebraska Sand hills Non-oriented patch dunes.
Nebraska Sand hills Boundary of the Sand hills. Note the sharp transition to flat plains. The irrigation circles are half a mile in diameter.
Nebraska Sand hills Bedrock escarpment 

Valentine to Thedford

U.S. 50 in Nevada is touted as the "Loneliest Road in America," but U.S. 83 from Valentine to Thedfordcan give it some serious competition. This is an area where you get no radiostations

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Thedford to Alliance

Nebraska Sand hills All of the relief in these pictures is dune topography. Only in a few river cuts is there bedrock.
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Nebraska Sand hills If you like long trains, Nebraska Route 2 is a place to see them. They are carrying coal from Wyoming, and 140 cars is not unusual.
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Nebraska Sand hills Left and below: Route 2 follows one of the few drainages in the Sand hills.
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Nebraska Sand hills Tiny ponds and wetlands are common between the dunes.
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Nebraska Sand hills Exposures of dune sand.

Alliance Area

Nebraska Sand hills Near Alliance the Sand hillsend very abruptly.
Nebraska Sand hills
Nebraska Sand hills Looking northwest across flat plains.

Nebraska Sand hills 

Above, panorama looking north from Nebraska Route 2 a few kilometers east ofAlliance, showing the edge of the Sand hills. Below, panorama looking south.

Nebraska Sand hills

Nebraska Sand hills Small tongues of the Sand hillsextend west of Alliance. Here we look south on U.S. 385 from flat plains to an outlier of the Sand hills.
Nebraska Sand hills Here we see the flat plains at right sloping up onto the dunes at left.
Nebraska Sand hills Left and below: this short strip of Sand hillsprovides as representative an example of dune topography as you can see anywhere.
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Nebraska Sand hills Left and below: looking west across flat plains to the edge of the dunes. Note the sharp transition from flat plain to dunes.
Nebraska Sand hills
Nebraska Sand hills Road cut showing Tertiary gravel. This unit underlies the dunes and is probably part of the Miocene Ogallala Group.
Nebraska Sand hills Looking off the escarpment at the edge of the Platte River valley.
Nebraska Sand hills Bedrock escarpment at the edge of the Platte River valley. This is a subdued version of the bluff topography seen farther west at Scott's Bluff.

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Created 22 July 2003, Last Update 08 June 2020