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Landscape, History And The Media: An Introduction, Christina E. Dando

Geography and Geology Faculty Publications

Writing from Nebraska’s eastern edge, my mind’s eye drawn to the Platte River (west and south of me), I consider landscape, history, and the media. The Oto called the river “Nebraskier” which means flat or shallow, giving us the name of the state.1 Early accounts describe the Platte as “a mile wide and an inch deep” and “too thick to drink, too thin to plow”; Washington Irving described it as “the most magnificent and useless of rivers” (Allin 1982, 1). But to dismiss this river is to judge too quickly. As the river gains momentum, growing in size, it is …