"The Cornhusker State"

Welcome to Nebraska

Nebraska/Iowa border on NE-2/IA-2
April 30, 2007

Nebraska has a reputation of being one of the fly-over states that is seemingly lost in the midst of the Great Plains. Like many other times throughout this project, I was surprised how sprawling and almost cosmopolitan Nebraska cities seemed. Omaha was much larger than I anticipated, and with a population of nearly half a million, it's a formidable player in the midwest. In fact, the downtown nightlife was great the night I met a friend for dinner in the market district. Not unlike Illinois, you take those two cities out of Nebraska and you are left with a lot of farms. But I found the terrain in the Cornhusker state to be hillier than I expected, but it didn't take much to stand out from Kansas and Iowa.

Sigh. Where do I begin with this sign? In a word, it's awful. It is bear the bottom along with other disappoints like Missouri and Kansas. First of all, green signs are a bad idea, since they blend in with the other information signs along the highway. I have no idea what the graphic on the right represents, but it appears to be some kind of house. And my favorite part is the attachment on the bottom declaring the Cornhusker state is the home of Arbor Day. If that's the one thing you want to feature about your state to tourists, I'd turn around right now. Interesting sidenote (to me anyway): This was the first sign I used for the project that was not on an interstate.

Welcome to Lincoln

April 30, 2007

When I think Lincoln, Nebraska, I think Cornhusker football. And I'm not the only one. As the lone major sporting team in town, the Nebraska football team dominates life in the Cornhusker state the way the Packers do in Green Bay. However, Lincoln has more than double the population of Green Bay and easily support an NFL franchise as well. I really liked the downtown area, and you could definitely pick up on the college campus vibe that emanates from the town. The city also has a numbering system for its streets that is confusing, and the north/south situation led to getting lost like I did in Des Moines, Iowa. The letter streets are also pretty unoriginal as well.

The nickname for the Nebraska capitol is "the penis of the plains," and it think it's fairly obvious where that comes from. This happens to be one of the few non-traditional capitols that doesn't mimic the U.S. Capitol, and is the second-tallest capitol building behind Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Aside from its architecture, the Nebraska capitol is also unique that it houses the only unicameral state legislature in the country. Also, Nebraskans elect their senators without party affiliation on the ballot. The grounds around the capitol were well-kept, but there were lacking the usual paraphernalia like statues and monuments that other states have, which is disappointing. How they could not have a bust of Abraham Lincoln anywhere is baffling to me.

Miscellaneous Nebraska Symbols

State Route Sign

License Plate

Seal

Quarter