Sand Hill Cranes
Posted by: 
BruceS
N 40° 46.267 W 098° 22.730
14T E 552421 N 4513534
Historical marker located west of Doniphan, Nebraska.
Waymark Code: WMNMK
Location: Nebraska, United States
Date Posted: 08/27/2006
Views: 23
"The
Big Bend of the Platte River in central Nebraska is one of the most important
staging areas for the spring migration of the world's largest population of
sandhill cranes. Throughout history
the Platte has also been a corridor of migration for native peoples and
Euroamericans. For both cranes and humans, the river has provided water, food,
and shelter in a sometimes harsh
environment.
No one knows when sandhill cranes appeared on the Nebraska landscape. Their
remains have been found in nine-million-year-old deposits in western Nebraska
and in prehistoric and historic
Native American sites throughout the central plains. The journals of explorers
and fur traders such as Edwin James (1820), John Townsend (1834), Rufus Sage
(1841), and John J. Audubon
(1843) mention sandhill cranes they observed while traveling up the Missouri
River or along the Platte.
Settlement of the Great Plains brought many changes to the Platte. Irrigation
reduced its volume, and its shorelines and islands became overgrown when prairie
fires and floods were controlled.
Only the Big Bend region still provides prime habitat to sustain the annual
migration of sandhill cranes." ~ marker text
Hall County Historical Society
Nebraska State Historical Society
Platte River Trust
Nebraska Department of Roads
Marker 389