For author interview: Jeff Barnes (402/516-6465 or husker80@cox.net)

(January 18, 2023) – The wild and woolly first years of the Nebraska Territory is the subject of Nebraska historian Jeff Barnes’s presentation of “The (Mad) Queen of the Prairies: Frenzied First Years of the Nebraska Territory” at the Wahoo Public Library on Sunday, February 19, at 2 p.m. The talk is sponsored by Humanities Nebraska.

 

Nebraska’s approach to establishing a territory was unusual to say the least, says Barnes, a native of Yutan. “We actually had a territory where an Indian chief was proclaimed as its first governor, where banks printed and passed their own money, and where women nearly first won the right to vote,” he said. “We went through a time when governors were seemingly switched every few months, and where the battle for the capital was a constant.”

 

The baby steps taken during the 1850s accidentally and deliberately set the path Nebraska followed for generations to come. Barnes shares rarely seen images and maps, along with seldom-heard stories of the unconventional, dysfunctional first years of Nebraska, a territory that newspapers of the day called the “Queen of the Prairies.”

 

A former newspaper reporter and editor, Barnes writes and lives in Omaha. He is a former board trustee with the Nebraska State Historical Society, past chairman of the Nebraska Hall of Fame Commission, and a frequently requested speaker with Humanities Nebraska. He is also a twice-awarded recipient of the Nebraska Book Award and the author of Cut in Stone, Cast in Bronze: Nebraska’s Historical Markers and Monuments, 150 @ 150: Nebraska’s Landmark Buildings at the State’s Sesquicentennial, The Great Plains Guide to Custer, Forts of the Northern Plains, and Extra Innings: The Story of Modisett Ball Park.

 

 

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