Scotts Bluff National Monument
Park History
Sourced
Scotts Bluff towers 800 feet over the North Platte River valley floor in the Nebraska Panhandle, a sandstone and siltstone landmark that wind and water are dismantling grain by grain. The monument’s 3,003 acres of prairie, bluffs and badlands protect Scotts Bluff, South Bluff, Mitchell Pass and remnants of the Oregon-California Trail. The valley has been a prairie pathway for at least 10,000 years, leading American Indians to places where bison came to drink, and the bluff’s size and badlands gave it the name Me-a-pa-te, “hill that is hard to go around.” [2] [1]
It takes its present name from Hiram Scott, a fur trader who died on an 1828 journey east from the Rockies; how he died remains a mystery. In 1850 anonymous laborers filled gullies and built ramps through Mitchell Pass, and from 1851 it was the main route, cutting about eight miles. In 1852, the peak year, up to 50,000 people passed. Travelers called the bluff “a Nebraska Gibraltar.” The Pony Express and the transcontinental telegraph later used the same gap; the railroad’s completion in 1869 greatly reduced emigrant travel. [2] [1]
Local leaders petitioned for protection, and President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the monument on December 12, 1919 — according to the 2015 foundation document, the first time the Antiquities Act was used to preserve a landscape based on the westward expansion movement. That document warns that the prairie is changing rapidly: cheatgrass occupies most of the monument, and the region is projected to warm 4 to 5 °F by 2050, with more intense storms and more heat waves. [3] [2]
Indigenous peoples
In the early 1990s archeologist Caven P. Clark identified another 51 sites here, all but two prehistoric, with finds ranging from perhaps 8,000 years before present to 1450; he concluded its springs were “of undoubted significance to the prehistoric settlement system.” From perhaps the 1500s to the early 1800s the region was a favorite bison hunting ground of the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho. [3] [2]
Plains peoples traded game, moccasins and bison robes to emigrants for flour, cloth and tobacco, and acted as paid guides. But emigrant livestock, Indian herds and an 1848–1862 drought depleted the corridor’s grasses; that decline and increased hunting drove bison from between the Platte and Arkansas rivers, and the tribes, Greenwald writes, drawing on Elliott West, became more dependent on the United States for food. After the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, the foundation document says, the Pawnee, Cheyenne and Sioux were forcibly removed to reservations. The foundation document notes that the 10 affiliated tribes are all off site. [3] [2]
Labor & the New Deal
The visitor center, Summit Road and administrative buildings were primarily built in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, the foundation document says. [2] In 1935, CCC Company 762 — 200 men whose orders to the Ozarks were changed at the last minute — set up Camp NM-1 in the badlands between the bluff and the river, raising barracks of adobe bricks they made on site. Enrollees built the first unit of the Oregon Trail Museum, worked on the Summit Road, which opened September 19, 1937, laid a water system and fences, and in 1936 cleaned and restored Scotts Spring, by then a muddy cattle water hole. An NPS landscape architect explained in 1936 that Chief Architect Vint recommended adobe not because it was appropriate for the area but because it was the only way to build comparatively long-lasting headquarters under Emergency Conservation Work limits. The CCC left in 1938. [3]
Sources
REVISE: Exhibit panels (1 items)
Long before Scotts Bluff National Monument became a national park, this land was home to Indigenous peoples whose connection to it spans thousands of years. The interpretive materials now being reviewed tell their story — often developed through years of formal tribal consultation, as required by federal law.
From the internal review records: “Panel describing Native American perspective on treaties and changing lifeways. Does intersect with the park story as treaty signing was part of the establishment of overland trails. Panel includes one William Henry Jackson painting of Fort Mitchell and Mitchell Pass (in the park).”
Why this matters: The Indigenous history presented at Scotts Bluff National Monument was developed through formal tribal consultation — a legal requirement under federal law. The language being reviewed was often specifically requested by tribal nations whose ancestors lived on this land for thousands of years. Revising it without renewed consultation would violate both the spirit and the letter of that process.
Panel describing Native American perspective on treaties and changing lifeways. Does intersect with the park story as treaty signing was part of the establishment of overland trails. Panel includes one William Henry Jackson painting of Fort Mitchell and Mitchell Pass (in the park).
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