Nebraska Life Magazine

Nebraska’s oldest continuously inhabited community began on a bluff above the Missouri River.

In the 1820s, Bellevue was a fur-trade post linking St. Louis commerce to the Platte Valley and the country beyond. Goods moved west, furs moved downriver and traders worked from the bluff where Nebraska’s earliest permanent community took shape. Over time, that post became a town shaped by river trade, mission activity, early institutions and the landscape that still defines Bellevue today.

Read the full story in the March/April 2026 issue of Nebraska Life.

PC: George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, Bellevue University, Fontenelle Forest

More than 600 volunteers are needed to raise and unfurl a 250-by-505-foot American flag during Memorial Day weekend events in Omaha and Lincoln celebrating America 250. The 126,000-square-foot flag weighs 3,000 pounds, turning the act of remembrance into a large-scale community effort.

Events begin May 22 at Memorial Park in Omaha and continue May 24 at Sandhills Global Event Center in Lincoln, with volunteer training, food, entertainment, a Benjamin Franklin reenactor, skydivers and drone shows. The weekend concludes May 25 at Memorial Park in Omaha with a Memorial Day ceremony, free pancakes, reenactors portraying service members who died in the nation’s wars and displays including the National Remembering Our Fallen Memorial, Flanders Field of Flags and a half-size replica of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Read the full story in the March/April 2026 issue of Nebraska Life.

PC: Patriotic Productions

Midland University’s women’s flag football team is helping establish one of Nebraska’s newest collegiate sports programs while competing in a game growing rapidly across the country.

Built through national recruiting, player leadership and a belief that football has room for them too, the Warriors are creating a foundation for the next generation of athletes in Nebraska.

Read the full story in the March/April 2026 issue of Nebraska Life.
PC: Jeremy Buss

By early summer, a half-inch Salt Creek tiger beetle flashes metallic brown and green across the mud in Lancaster County’s saline wetlands, hunting by sight and speed along stream edges.

The federally endangered species survives only in less than 15 acres of habitat along Little Salt Creek, where about 275 adults remain and biologists work to protect and restore the moist, exposed ground it needs.

Read the full story in the March/April 2026 issue of Nebraska Life.

PC: Arthur Jones/Nebraska Public Media News

For years, a lone elm stood on a rise along Branched Oak Road near Garland, its silhouette a familiar marker against the prairie. Photographer Dillon Hardinger returned to it again and again, capturing it through seasons, storms and starlit nights. When the tree was cut down in 2025, the hill stood bare – but in his images, it remains.

Read the full story in the March/April 2026 issue of Nebraska Life.
https://na2.hubs.ly/H053thm0

PC: Dillon Hardinger