This first issue of 2026 features articles on Nebraska, “The Cornhusker State”. This issue, like all issues in this continuing series, will feature the state’s history, including how to find great historical and genealogical records and more:

● Mining Genealogical Gold: Finding Historical Nebraska Records (and the stories behind them). The story of Nebraska begins with wind across tall grass. In an age before human memory, this land already stood as a vast ocean of prairie, where bison thundered in herds so enormous their passing shook the earth. The first peoples who made this territory their home understood its character – its harsh winters, scorching summers, occasional bounty, and frequent scarcity. They learned to bend these forces rather than break against them.

● Crossroads of a Continent: Tales From the Trails. Nebraska occupies a geographic position that made it a natural crossroads for human movement, commerce, and cultural exchange. Its waterways, particularly the Missouri, Platte, and Republican rivers, created natural travel corridors. Its grasslands, while challenging in some respects, offered relatively unobstructed east-west passage. These geographic features established Nebraska as a transportation corridor and meeting ground long before formal territorial organization.

● Weathering Nebraska. There is an old saying in Nebraska, and in other states as well: “If you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute and it’ll change.” Like many other old sayings, this one contains just enough truth to keep it going. The climate in Nebraska, in common with that of the plains region generally, is subject to violent and seemingly unpredictable fluctuations. There can be extremes of heat and cold, violent thunderstorms, and hot, dry winds, blizzards, tornadoes and hailstorms.

● Sidney, Nebraska: The Wickedest Town in the Whole West. I originally planned for this to be a “Dash” article, entitled “Buried at Boot Hill”, about a historic cemetery, a place where a number of people were interred in the early days of Sidney, Nebraska. It was called the Boot Hill Cemetery. However, the more I researched this particular cemetery, I realized it would be interesting to write more broadly about what one newspaper called “the wickedest town in the whole west”.