White Gold of the Plains

Nebraska is far from the ocean, but the land remembers water. More than 100 million years ago, it was the floor of a vast inland sea, and its salt still lingers in the marshes around Lincoln.

In this episode, we trace how salt shaped Nebraska’s history, from the Otoe, Omaha, and Pawnee who gathered crystals for trade and food, to settlers who dreamed of a booming salt industry, to the rare plants and the tiny, fierce Salt Creek tiger beetle that now fight to survive in the last saline wetlands.

From Indigenous knowledge to endangered species, White Gold of the Plains reveals how salt has always held Nebraska in its grip.

See photos, maps, and glimpses of prairie life on Instagram: @rootedintheplains

Want to learn more? 

• Athen, Sierra R., Shivangi Dubey, John A. Kyndt, Aharon Oren, and Katsumi Matsuura. 2021. “The Eastern Nebraska Salt Marsh Microbiome Is Well Adapted to an Alkaline and Extreme Saline Environment.” Life (2075-1729) 11 (5): 446. doi:10.3390/life11050446.
• Early, Ann M. “Salt Making.” Encyclopedia of Arkansas, March 17, 2025. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/salt-making-567/. 
• Gilbert, M C, and R G Stutheit. “Saltmarshes in Eastern Nebraska: Study Characterizes Some Unusual Wetlands.” WETLANDS RES. PROGRAM BULL 5, no. 1 (1995): 1–4.
• Horton, Agnes. “The History of Nebraska’s Saline Land Grant.” Nebraska History 40, no. 2 (1959): 89.
• Palmer, Joseph A., and Kay Klatt. “The Natural History and Captive Husbandry of the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle, Cicindela (=ellipsoptera) Nevadica Lincolnian (Coleoptera: Carabidae).” DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln, 2014. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/entomologyother/123/. 
• Rumney, Thomas. “Salt and Settlement in Nineteenth-Century Nebraska.” Material Culture 16, no. 1 (1984): 43–54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41784818. 
• Spomer, Stephen M., and Leon G. Higley. “Population Status and Distribution of the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle, Cicindela Nevadica Lincolniana Casey (Coleoptera: Cicindelidae).” Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 66, no. 4 (1993): 392–98. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25085468.
• Steinauer, Gerry. “Saving Saltwort.” Nebraskaland Magazine, August 17, 2024. https://magazine.outdoornebraska.gov/stories/conservation/saving-saltwort/. 
• Ungar, Irwin A., William Hogan, and Mark McClelland. “Plant Communities of Saline Soils at Lincoln, Nebraska.” The American Midland Naturalist 82, no. 2 (1969): 564–77. https://doi.org/10.2307/2423796.

Transcript

White Gold of the Plains Transcript

Welcome to Rooted in the Plains, a podcast about the people, places, and moments that shape the Great Plains. I'm Nicole, and in each episode, I take you back to a time when sod houses lined the prairie, railroads carved through the tall grass, and community meant survival. For photos, maps, and glimpses of Plains life, be sure to follow along on Instagram at Rooted in the Plains. 

Nebraska is a thousand miles from the nearest ocean. But the land remembers the water. More than a million years ago, this was the floor of a vast inland sea. Today, no waves crash here. No shoreline stretches to the horizon. Instead, a sea of grass covers the land. And in its low places, something rare endures. Groundwater still carries salt, rising to the surface and leaving white crusts along the marsh. These saline wetlands are fragments of that ancient ocean, hidden in the heart of the prairie. It shaped Nebraska in surprising ways. It sustained life, fueled dreams of industry, and still defines one of the state's rarest landscapes. This is the story of the many lives of salt. 

Long ago, before Nebraska was a state, it was already a natural part of life on the plains. On the eastern edge of what is now Lancaster County, a ring of bluffs cradled a wide, marshy basin. For the native people, salt was never just a mineral to sell. Tribes like the Otoe, Omaha, and Pawnee gathered crystals or boiled the briny water, much as other indigenous groups did elsewhere. Using clay pans over wood fires, they evaporated liquid into cakes of salt. These cakes could be dried, stored, or carried elsewhere. It balanced diets heavy in maize and game. It provided essential minerals in the heat of summer. It moved through trade networks to communities that had no local source. And like many natural elements, it likely held ritual or medicinal meanings. 

But the basin was also a place of tension. Besides Otoe, Omaha and Pawnee, Sioux and Cheyenne also came. Sometimes for the salt itself, sometimes to raid other groups who gathered there. Historian W. W. Cox recalled that as late as 1862, Omaha camps still gathered at the basin on their way to their summer hunting grounds. The stories remind us that the salt shaped movements and encounters. More than survival, they revealed traditions carried forward across generations. 

Long before settlers speculated about profits, native people understood salt as sustenance, medicine, and a story. By the early 1800s, explorers and traders were taking note. Soon, all that could be imagined of the salt basin was how quickly it could be the foundation of industry. It set limits on how far west people could live. For early settlers, salt was more than a seasoning. It preserved meat, it kept livestock healthy. Before inland springs were discovered, pioneers traveled all the way back east to trade for salt. Dangerous and exhausting trips would have slowed that progress. 

Here in Nebraska, Saline Springs in Lancaster County gave rise to one of the state's first industries. The basin stretched for miles along Salt Creek, where the brackish water left its mark. In 1864, Congress passed the Enabling Act, guaranteeing Nebraska up to twelve salt springs and 72 sections of saline land. Officials saw that as a path of revenue. Newspapers boasted that Lincoln would become the “great emporium of the West Missouri”. 

Entrepreneurs rushed in. Men like Cox and Peckham boiled brine in iron kettles. Families built salt works and hoped to strike it rich. By law, the state collected two cents per bushel. In reality, Nebraska earned about $60 before production collapsed in early 1871. The problem was simple. The brine was weak. Profitable salines measured above 95 degrees of salinity. Lancasters barely reached 40. It took too much labor, too much wood, not enough salt. By the 1870s, the industry was already fading. But for a brief moment, salt stood beside timber and farmland as a measure of wealth in the new state. 

Court battles erupted over ownership. One even involved J. Sterling Morton, the Nebraska politician best remembered as the founder of Arbor Day. He believed the salines might bring fortune. His son, Joy Morton, would later build Morton Salt in Chicago, this time with a stronger brine, modern chemistry, and a national reach. The little girl with the umbrella on that familiar blue canister indirectly traces her story back to the same family that once speculated on Nebraska's salt basin. 

Railroads sealed the industry's fate. Cheaper salt poured in from elsewhere. Lincoln's prosperity would not be built on brine. What remains are names on the map Salt Creek, Salt Basin, and a few brackish ponds. Still, for a moment, salt shaped the ambitions of a young state. While the dreams of an industry evaporated, the salty soils remained. And in those harsh wetlands, a different way of life was still being lived. 

Life in Nebraska's saline wetlands is not for the faint of heart. Summers can bake the ground at over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and floods sometimes sweep across the flats. The soil itself is briny. Most plants shrivel and die. Yet here thrives a community of specialists, plants and animals that have turned salt into survival. Biologists call them halophytes: plants adapted to saline soil. Saltwort is one of the most striking. They have waxy leaves, compact stems, and the ability to draw water into their roots when the soil is loaded with salt. Its scale-like leaves taste salty if you nibble the stems. By late summer, its green flowers fade into scarlet, each stem holding a single seed. Inland salt grass and spearscale also hold to the ground, roots and leaves designed to hold on to water and soil that wants to pull it away. Some plants exist here and almost nowhere else in Nebraska. Seaside heliotrope, salt marsh aster, and Texas dropseed. Together, they stabilize soils and form a miniature ecosystem that cannot exist without salt. 

And among them lives the most famous resident of all. Imagine a featherweight champion with a vicious bite, found only on the north side of Lincoln. Fierce, Fast and Endangered. That’s the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle. It's one of the rarest insects in North America. Adults hunt with sharp jaws, snapping up flies and tiny prey. Underground, larvae dig vertical burrows, lying and waiting. These burrows protect them from heat and may help them survive floods. But the species is fragile. Since it was listed as endangered in 2005, numbers have stayed in the hundreds, sometimes fewer than 100, never more than a thousand. More than 90% of Nebraska's saline wetlands have been drained or destroyed. Competition, predators, and pesticides add more pressure. The beetles' fight is the wetlands' fight. These marshes support other rare insects and more than 250 species of migratory birds. Protect the beetle, and you protect the ecosystem that depends on salt. 

From ancient seas to indigenous trade, from failed industry to fragile wetlands, salt has always had a hold on Nebraska. It shaped where people gathered, how communities dreamed, and what species could survive in this unlikely place. Even here, in the middle of the Great Plains, thousands of miles from the nearest shoreline, there is still salt water. Whether you come from one of the coasts or right here in the middle of the sea of grass, these wetlands remind us that the past is never really gone. It lingers in the soil, in the stories, and in the fragile lives that depend on it. Thanks for listening to Rooted in the Plains. I hope you learned something new today. For photos, maps, and glimpses of Plains life, visit the Instagram page Rooted in the Plains. And if you enjoyed this episode and want to dig a little deeper, check out the show notes for additional readings and a full list of sources used in this episode. Thanks.