Nebraska's Natural Beauty | Nebraska Stories | Nebraska Public Media

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Coming up on "Nebraska Stories," Nebraska's Natural Beauty on display during four seasons of the Platte River. Deep inside the carved sandstone of Robber's Cave, (upbeat music) a paradise nestled in Nebraska's Pine Ridge country, and the Rocky Buttes of the Wildcat Hills. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (peaceful music) (train engine chugging in distance) (train engine chugging in distance) (keys jingling) (keys rattling in lock) (urban noises) (soft dramatic music) (light switch clicks) (light switch clicks) [Joel] There's just kind of a mystique about Robber's Cave with it being so strange. In Nebraska, you think of the plains, you don't think of caves. [Narrator] For more than 150 years, one of Lincoln's most timeless relics has been right below its feet. Robber's Cave has long been the subject of speculation, myth, and rumors. A popular site for clandestine meetings romantic interludes, and curious explorers. Joel Green is one of those curious explorers. [Joel] We've got quite the eclectic mix in the wall. V V C December 13th, 1901, not far from a college party from the eighties, Beta Sigma Psi 87. [Narrator] Fascinated by the cave since his childhood, he spent years researching the history behind Robber's Cave, including how it got its name. Jesse James is the outlaw the cave is named for whether he was here or not. Something that'd be pretty impossible to prove, I think. But there's no documented evidence that he ever hid out in Robber's Cave. I've learned that almost any cave you visit in the Midwest has Jesse James folklore tied to it. And this one is no different [Narrator] Whether this local lore is true or not, the earliest recorded use of the cave was as a brewery warehouse. [Joel] Robber's Cave is a 5,600 square feet cave located in Lincoln, Nebraska. It's all made out of Dakota Sandstone. There was kind of a natural portion of the cave that started as a little pock in the bluff of sandstone. It removed the cap rock and then in 1869 brewers from Waukesha, Wisconsin and Red Wing, Minnesota came to Lincoln to build Lincoln's first brewery. [Narrator] During the next few years, worker Jacob Andra armed with only a pickax, shovel, and wheelbarrow extended the cavern with 500 feet of tunnels. Once the brewery closed people began using the caves for all kinds of activity. (old time peppy music) (old time peppy music) [Joel] You just had these abandoned caves. The tunnels began to be used for things like horse thievery, gambling, a lot of seedy behavior. After that, the cave was kind of used for anything and everything. [Narrator] Beginning in 1906 and through most of the 20th century the largest manmade landmark was open to the public and became a popular tourist attraction. [Joel] It was a place where social organizations, bands, college parties, they came and and just created memories and left their mark on the sandstone walls. [Narrator] Joel's research spans the caves more than 150 year history, and with that research he uncovered some uncomfortable truths. I even found a reference of the Ku Klux Klan using the cave in the twenties. The Klan was at their height in Nebraska in the 1920s. There was a reference in a paper of the Klan using the cave coming all the way from Indiana for initiations. [Narrator] The cave was also a popular concert venue. [Joel] I've got a list of bands in the book that played it here over the years. There used to be a stage in the back of the second tunnel. [Narrator] Even with all of his knowledge there are things about the cave Joel can't easily explain. [Joel] When I came in to get the lights up for the tour and they weren't flashing on and off nobody was back here playing a joke on me. When I walked into the tunnels all the light bulbs started to go in waves like this up and down the cave, and I'd never seen it do that before. So I got the phone out started recording everything right away. I didn't think anybody'd believe me but I had tours to do and I'm like, great how am I gonna fix this? Well, I made it halfway down to right about here where the steps begin and they all shut off. I was just standing here in the dark recording with my phone, and I remember it like it was yesterday. I looked left, nothing. I checked back here, everything's blacked out. A couple of seconds go by. Bloom, one light bulb pops up in the whole cave and it was this one right next to where I was standing, and that's when I left. (laughs) [Narrator] Since the publication of his book "Robber's Cave, Truth, Legends, Recollections" Joel continues to gather information on Robber's Cave. One way he learns new stories is through hosting guided tours of the cave. [Joel] I've got a lot of photographs before and after tours from guests and also on the tours people will share stories. And so I'm always accumulating more and more photographs and I'm always accumulating more and more stories to share and incorporate on the tours. For example, a guy named Rick he came and he had long white hair and glasses and I remember him wearing a tie dye shirt and he was telling me how he used to run around in here. [Narrator] Like the many people who've shared their wistful memories of Robber's Cave with Joel, he too is forever entangled with the history of this sandy underground chamber. A place where fact and fiction gave birth to epic tales of Lincoln's past. (gentle music) (gentle music) (mellow music) NARRATOR: Named by hungry Army scouts who feasted on salt bacon after surviving an Indian skirmish. Sowbelly Canyon is located in the Pine Ridge country and counted among Nebraska's great natural wonders. A 12 mile public road winds through Sowbelly Canyon. And a small park gifted by a ranching family to the Village of Harrison, is a favorite among locals. As scenic as it is, the canyon has suffered a number of natural disasters. A raging wildfire in 2006 burned down most of the pine trees that populated the hills. There was another fire in the area in 2012. And more recently, a devastating flood. MATT STEFFL: There was a flood in the spring of 2015. This area received roughly their annual amount of precipitation within a handful of hours. ZANYA FAINT: It seemed like a hurricane. The wind blew hard, and it just came down in buckets. It was torrential. CHRIS VOELLER: I'm not giving you anymore, no. NARRATOR: Chris Voeller and her husband Jim own Sowbelly Ranch which sits in the heart of the canyon. Their son-in-law was home the night of the flood. CHRIS: The water he said, it sounded like a freight train. Something so loud he said it was, he just couldn't imagine how loud it was. And he couldn't see, it's dark. He said, he decided if the water came up to this house he was gonna go up to the top house. But it didn't get in this house, we were lucky, it didn't come across the road into this place. It went down the road. MATT: Everything here, you see the canyon's all around us. So when 12 inches comes in a handful of hours, it all comes down to the stream almost immediately. And then that was on top of all the timber that had fallen from prior wildfires, that came down along with it, and that's what end up creating most of the damage in the area. (mellow music) CHRIS: We were stuck in here, I think, four or five days. Couldn't get in and out because the roads were all gone. And the worst part was the dead trees from '06, they all washed down. (chuckles) You know, they just all came down in big piles. The creek had changed. It blocked the whole creek and it was coming down towards us. AL HANSON: There was a tremendous amount of silt and rock that was moved. The stream was widened in a lot of places, where there used to be a bank, it was gone. It became sediment and it's somewhere down stream. ZANYA: Well, of course, after the flood we had to close the park. And a lot of the area people used it for picnicking and family events. We had numerous weddings down there. We were afraid that maybe we wouldn't be able to bring the park back at all. NARRATOR: The Village of Harrison reached out to federal and state agencies for flood assistance. Their request for aid was met with resistance. ZANYA: Matt Steffl from Games and Parks got on board right away and said, you know, we really need to get this process going. MATT: When Federal Emergency Management came into the area, their primary concern was reestablishing the developed areas of the park. I pointed out as far as developed areas the very unique public fishery that we have here with a very small number of miles of this type of fishery in the entire state, and we're looking at a very large stretch of some of the highest quality stuff right here. NARRATOR: When it comes to publicly accessible cold water trout streams in Nebraska, there's less than a dozen miles of it. Sowbelly Creek is among the best in the state and it runs through Coffee Park. MATT: It's really an outstanding area. It's a cold water A-stream, which is our highest quality cold water stream in Nebraska. Very very limited. And so, when we have a chance to work in those and make sure they're protected, we're gonna do what we can to do that. NARRATOR: The Federal Emergency Management Agency agreed to cover 75% of the cleanup cost. The rest of the funding came from the Nebraska Emergency Management, The Village of Harrison, and the Game and Parks Commission. ZANYA: As far as the village is concerned you know, there's just no way we could afford that. 'Cause we are a small village, we're you know, our budget is very tight. NARRATOR: In November of last year, large equipment was brought in to remove debris from Coffee Park. But the stream bed will require additional permits from the Army Corp of Engineers. AL: We gotta get a corp permit before we can get in the water. So, yeah we'll be working in the water and moving the stream in some places. Mainly narrowing it, in some places. There's wide riffles that were created after the flood because of the rock and sediment that just came when the water fell so fast that it's widened and it's heating up the stream. And there's no way fish could live there. This high bank needs to be repaired. You know when you have a big flood, it comes down and it takes a hard turn to the left right here so it had a big eddy pool so it deposited a tremendous amount of silt. It'll heal and streams heal themselves. They tend to, the natural meander they'll tend to cut themselves back to the proper meander they should be in, whatever. But it just takes a lot of flow and sometimes takes a lot of time. (ATV motor) NARRATOR: For private land owners like the Voellers, they receive no federal or state assistance for flood clean up. (ATV motor) CHRIS: I mean, you're so frustrated, what can you do. And we just started in the yard. (garden tiller starting) We fixed the garden. (mellow music) And we put a new fence up there. We put fence up for the horses. We still have fence down. It might take us five years, it might take us ten years. NARRATOR: The Voellers have been good stewards of their land. And just recently, placed a conservation easement on their 1300 acre Sowbelly Ranch, with the Nebraska Land Trust. MATT: Conservation easements are to where a landowner can decide to either donate or sell some of the rights that they have as a property owner. Some of the options that they have on their property. CHRIS: I think it's probably the only ranch in Nebraska that has turkey, sheep, deer, elk, probably everything you'd want in a place. And we had a lot of friends in Cheyenne that wanted to buy 10 acres on the creek. Or the 160 up top, build a house. Or piecemeal it out. And I don't think that's what should happen to it. So this place can never be subdivided, it has to be sold in one piece if it every is sold. And it's protected forever. (Bird cry) * MUSIC NARRATOR: As the sun rises over the Rocky buttes of the Wildcat Hills, one of the most diverse ecosystems anywhere begins another day. Inside a nearby nature center, young visitors get a sense of how the wildlife living in this ecosystem prepare for the upcoming winter. Amanda Filipi specializes in guiding the next generation of explorers. And she's hoping to give them the same love for the area that she developed when she first came here. AMANADA FILIPI: I packed up my car and got a job out here about seven years ago and expecting it to look like a majority of the state - kind of flat and a lot of crop grounds, but when you come up over those hills you see those rocky buttes and those pine woodlands and it's just different than the rest of the state. It kind of gives you a little bit of some goose bumps. This has some unique geological type formations. It's considered a biologically unique landscape in the state of Nebraska. It's the only place in the state where you're gonna find these type of formations, these type of habitats, the critters. So it has everything you need in one small little place. NARRATOR: The State Recreation Area has nearly 4 miles in trails and a thousand acres in all but the actual landscape of the Wildcat Hills extends much further. PAT REECE: It's absolutely unique. The Wildcat Hills runs 35 to 40 miles long. It runs through three different counties in the Nebraska Panhandle. You would have to drive a long ways to find anything like this. NARRATOR: As a Rangeland Ecologist, Pat Reece has an intimate relationship with the land. REECE: Within the Great Plains, it's extremely rare to find combinations of the species that are here. When we talk about the mountain species, we have a lot of Ponderosa Pine, the Rocky Mountain Juniper. Species like Mountain Mahogany and on the wildlife side, oh my goodness. I love watching birds, Mountain Bluebirds. Townsend Solitaires. Red Crossbills. It's just absolutely amazing the diversity of wildlife and landscape that we have in this area. NARRATOR: Having special access to areas like this is just one of the perks of Pat's job. But in the past 20 years, a group of conservationists has quietly acquired an additional 20,000 acres in the Wildcat Hills for the public to enjoy. The goal is to keep this wildlife rich corridor...wild. REECE: When you go to the front range of Colorado and you see how housing development has moved way up into those mountain environments, the same concern is very real here. The conservation organizations are hopeful that they are would be able to put a large enough contiguous acreage under common management so that they can sustain the wonderful diversity that we have. We have introduced Big Horn sheep in the Wildcat Hills now. We have our native deer and elk and every once in awhile, we actually have a moose. This ecosystem is a tremendous environment for bobcats. And we have our resident mountain lion population. I see mountain lion signs. I see mountain lion scat. I see mountain lion kills. NARRATOR: For Bob Smith who manages much of the land for the conservation group, this place is something special. BOB SMITH: I'm third generation here. And uh, this five river basin was formed from people that care about the landscapes and conservation and uh, I think it was important for us to give back to the community. We uh we grew up with the best of the best and things have changed and, I think that having land like this that for everybody to enjoy where they don't have to pay fees to -to hunt or to hike, it's real special. NARRATOR: For now, there are few trails but the existing two-track ranch roads provide quick entry into the wilderness, by foot, bike or animal. KAREN JOHNSON: That's ok... good girl.... KAREN: A lot of people don't know these places exist. NARRATOR: In 20 years of riding these trails, the last 10 with her trusty mule Peg, Karen Johnson has seen only a handful of other riders. KAREN: I just love being out here. It's very relaxing. You don't think about the grocery lists or what you have to do next, -you're just out here and the pine trees' smell is wonderful, we have wildflowers, in the spring that come out. We've seen coyote, turkeys, raccoon. I've seen a fox before. I had moose prints outside my house just in the past month. And it's kind of the anticipation I guess for me of what we're gonna see around the corner, you know, what's gonna be there this time. Is it the wildlife? Is it the flowers? It's just - it's a sanctuary I guess for me. NARRATOR: Even for Bob and Pat, who've spent years exploring the area, they're still discoveries to be had. REECE: That's one of the things that's so fascinating about the Wildcat Hills. You really don't know what you're gonna see when you get around the next bend. (Discussion on a fossil) NARRATOR: And For Pat, these hills are not only his office, but also a place to get away and see old friends. REECE: I just like to look around every corner and behind every tree as I go. So many of these plant species are like friends. And sometimes you don't get to see your friends every year. Because they need to have rain. And it's not there every year. So when you see an old friend you haven't seen for two or three years, you sit down and you enjoy it. REECE: It's not such a terrible thing not to think about anything. To sit and just enjoy the wind, the breeze, to just simply enjoy. * MUSIC (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Watch more Nebraska stories on our website, Facebook and YouTube. Nebraska Stories is funded in part by the Margaret and Martha Thomas Foundation, and the Bill Harris and Mary Sue Hormel Harris Fund for the presentation of cultural programming. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)