Willa Cather first came to Webster County from Virginia in 1883 at the age of nine. The vast open prairies of Nebraska made a lasting impression on her. "This country was mostly wild pasture and as naked as the back of your hand. I was little and homesick and lonely and my mother was homesick and nobody paid any attention to us. So the country and I had it out together and by the end of the first autumn, that shaggy grass country had gripped me with a passion I have never been able to shake." Her life task became portraying how the pioneers tamed the wild land.


The 610 acre Willa Cather Memorial Prairie preserves an example of the native grassland that once covered Nebraska. Throughout the summer, numerous wildflowers grow amid tall native grasses in an ever changing display of color. Here life typical of the prairie flourishes as it did before the first settlers came.
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The prairie was purchased by the Nature Conservancy with a grant from the Woods Charitable Fund of Lincoln, Nebraska.

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Show me all markers in:  Red Cloud, NE  |  Webster County  |  68970  |  Nebraska  |  United States of America

Burlington Depot
Red Cloud Volunteer Fire Department Bell
1871 Red Cloud 1971
Cather Childhood Home
Cottonwood Tree - 1871
Grace Episcopal Church
1871 Webster County 1971
The Geographic Center of the United States
The Geographic Center
The Geographic Center

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