When European settlers first came to Cuming County, they saw only what the Omaha, Pawnee, Otoe, and Ponca, and a few early trappers and traders had always seen: grass. They found acres of big bluestem, little bluestem, switchgrass, and sideoats grama. With slough grass growing as tall as a man on horseback, landmarks--a lone tree or a bend in the river--helped them find their way home to families burrowed into their dugouts like gophers on a mound-dotted prairie. Beginning in the 1860s, railroad tracks crisscrossed the state, bringing Germans, Bohemians, Scandinavians, Irish, and more....