The sandy channels of the braided Platte River flow to Kearney in a shallow ribbon of blue flanked by farm fields of green and gold. Even Nebraska’s famous sandhill cranes congregate at Kearney, a prairie community long known as a meeting place and crossroads.

Anchoring the lowest point of the Platte River’s “Big Bend” – a 210-mile-long sweeping dip through Central Nebraska – Kearney is a college town. The city of 33,000 residents also is a farm community, an industrial center and tourism hub. State routes 10, 40 and 44 keep traffic flowing, along with U.S. Highway 30 – the Lincoln Highway – running east and west through town. Interstate 80, which crosses Kearney’s southern edge, parallels the Platte for most of the roadway’s 455 miles though Nebraska.     

Long before the speed limit climbed to 75 mph, pioneers traveling the Oregon, California and Mormon trails also followed the river to Kearney. Their ruts and aspirations converged at Fort Kearny under the protection of the U.S. Army. The Transcontinental Railroad’s iron rails came next, the hardworking, gandy-dancing section hands forging yet another lane on the nation’s Great Platte River Road. When the Burlington Northern and Missouri Pacific railroads met the Union Pacific at this little spot in the Big Bend in 1871, Kearney Junction began growing – at a gallop. The town incorporated as Kearney two years later.

Debbie Gronewold had been around horses all her life when a for sale sign caught her attention like a yanked rein. The downtown placard wasn’t hawking a steed, colt or mare. The sign advertised a leather repair shop. Though she knew saddles and stirrups, Gronewold had no idea how to fix them. She tried to talk herself out of buying the business. After all, with 29 years spent working at automotive supplier Eaton Corp. – one of Kearney’s largest employers – she already had a career. But Gronewold was eager for a change. “I felt like I was jumping off a cliff,” she said. “I told myself, here we go Kearney; we’re going for a ride.”

Nearly a century-and-a-half after its founding at the frontier’s edge, Kearney remains a community of pioneering residents willing to risk almost everything for themselves and their city.

Fortunately for Gronewold, the previous owner stayed on to train her – for a decade. Now, Gronewold repairs just about anything she can stitch, glue or patch. 

“Just like churches and bars, just about every little prairie town had a leather and shoe repair person in the early days,” said Gronewold, who moved from Juniata to attend Kearney State College, now the University of Nebraska at Kearney. One of her favorite jobs is sewing the Lopers mascot on 70 pairs of shoes for her alma mater’s wrestling team. Since buying the business in 2010, she’s never been caught up.

Bins overflow with rivets, snaps, eyelets and buckles that look like museum pieces. Machines used to replace boot soles and repair saddles are 90 years old. Even older is the brick street out front.

Kearney’s “The Bricks” area is a thriving entertainment, dining and shopping district mostly from 25th Street to North Railroad Street. But the historic pavers extend two blocks south of the tracks on Central Avenue, past Gronewold’s shop and into the oldest part of town – Kearney Junction’s original business district. Local merchants call it Old Town.

Business names like Old Town Salon and Barber Shop show community pride for this neighborhood within the city. Next to the Knights of Columbus’ Old Town Hall, a mural depicts Kearney from the days of its first pioneers to the arrival of smoke-belching locomotives. Gronewold and other area businessowners hope to raise $75,000 to build a replica railroad depot in Kearney Junction Park between Old Town and The Bricks. For now, work prevents them from spending much time on the project. “Maybe we need to find a retiree to take that on,” she said.

After nearly a half-century spent working at Tex’s Cafe – since she was a senior at Kearney High School in 1973 – Mary Livingston has gotten to know a lot of customers. But she can’t call most of them by name.

“I know the people of Kearney by their faces and what they order,” said Livingston, who owns the cafe across the street from the Kearney Police Department. The business moved here from Kearney’s east side after I-80 opened in 1974 and Highway 30 traffic dwindled.

A row of lunch counter stools spin visitors back to earlier times. The decor is Coca-
Cola. Pepsi is not on tap, but Livingston’s kitchen does stir up cinnamon rolls, biscuits and gravy, and other made from scratch offerings that she said reminds the city’s new college students of home.

One regular customer received a loving knock on the door after he stopped showing up.

“When he missed several days, I sent my husband to look for him,” Livingston said. “The man was sick and couldn’t go out. We took him some food.” 

The work ethic of caring Kearney-area residents attracts employers like automotive supplier Baldwin Filters, the Buckle clothing distributor and sporting goods retailer Cabela’s. Doctors and nurses report to two Kearney hospitals – CHI Health Good Samaritan and Kearney Regional Medical Center. The University of Nebraska Kearney employs 900 people from Kearney and 25 surrounding communities.

Kearney’s residents and visitors can recharge in 18 parks totaling more than 600 acres. The Kearney Hike and Bike Trail winds for 13 miles through the western and southern parts of the community and along the Platte River to Fort Kearny State Historical Park. Bicyclists riding the route can take a break midway at Yanney Heritage Park.

Eighty-foot-tall Gottschalk Tower provides an aerial view of the park, the river valley and a healthy Kearney growth spurt jutting into surrounding agricultural land.

Kearney native and Omaha businessman Mike Yanney envisioned a public green space here when he looked out across southwest Kearney cornfields in 1998. He eventually purchased 80 acres for the park named for his parents, E.K. and Mary Yanney. The community embraced the gift and ran with it, with residents digging deep into their own pockets to fund a new garden complex in the park’s northwest corner.

The recently opened first phase of the project includes Nebraska native plants, and a pollinator garden that appears in the shape of a butterfly when viewed from the tower.

Insects winging it to the park might look down on Kearney, but local businessman Paul Younes is always looking up.

Kearney’s 1,800 lodging rooms fill with visitors in town to witness the spring sandhill crane migration, college sports events and Tri-City Storm hometown hockey games. Being smack dab in the heart of the nation’s heartland – promoted since 1890 as being 1,733 miles from both Boston and San Francisco – Kearney is a convenient central location that does a banner business in meetings and corporate gatherings.

Younes moved more than 6,500 miles from his native Israel to Kearney to study business administration in 1972. Washing dishes for a local motel restaurant was his first hospitality industry experience. He worked his way up to motel manager but didn’t stop there. Today, Younes’ eight Kearney hotels (he owns hotels in Columbus, Fremont, Grand Island, Hastings and Norfolk, too) provide lodging and convention space near I-80 and downtown.  

“Paul is a visionary risktaker who is all in when it comes to Kearney. He teaches his kids and grandkids how to give back and be generous with time and treasure,” said Judi Sickler of the Kearney Area Community Foundation. “He’s touched almost every Kearney charity in some way.”

During a business lunch at the new Cunningham’s on the Lake restaurant near Younes’ Hospitality Campus, the hotelier and Kearney City Manager Mike Morgan discuss development ideas. Their collaborations will soon come to an end. Morgan is retiring in April.

“April of what year, we’re not sure,” Younes chimes in, causing both men to laugh. “I’m hoping 2023 or maybe 2024. Mike has been good for Kearney.”

The community has expanded in every direction in recent years. Duplexes and single-family homes are going up in northeast Kearney and apartments are being built to the southwest. New homes and acreages are popping up on Kearney’s northern edge while the second stories of historic downtown buildings are being renovated into loft apartments. Younes plans to donate land near I-80 for a new community sports complex. 

His hospitality business stalled when evening thunderstorms dumped nine inches of rain on Kearney on July 9, 2019.  

Overwhelmed storm gutters regurgitated the deluge. The murky torrent flowed into Kearney homes. Sixty cars were ruined at Midway Auto. Resident river rats fired up airboats to rescue stranded neighbors and visitors. Among the hotels inundated with waist-high water were seven of Younes’ properties. With the power out and water everywhere, a clerk at the nearby Ramada said, “I felt like I was on the Titanic.”

Kearney police officers went door to door warning of the rising tide. Tourists evacuated Stagecoach Gifts, only to find I-80 westbound closed. Store owners Gary and Susan Glandon and their son, Skylar, frantically placed anything they could pick up on top of the counters.

Within minutes, 15 inches of dirty water flowed into the store known for quality silver jewelry and cheesy coonskin caps.

As quickly as it arrived, the torrent flowed east to Gibbon, Shelton and Wood River, leaving Kearney’s south side a mess. Thankfully there were no human fatalities.

Cleanup for the Stagecoach crew included buying a generator and drilling holes in the bottom of jewelry cases so they could vacuum out the muck. Dehumidifiers and fans ran for weeks. “We had half of our inventory out in the parking lot. It looked like a flea market,” Skylar said.

The gift and souvenir shop has sold more than 25,000 pairs of leather moccasins since opening in 1973. The staff once sent an out-of-state visitor home with something that wasn’t technically in stock – a giant Nebraska tumbleweed. The Glandons declared “no charge” for the weed that the customer found outside and offered to purchase. With the store good as new and the flood a memory, Stagecoach is back to its daily deluge of curious I-80 travelers stocking up on souvenirs.

Younes cleaned up, too. His new 100,000-square-foot Crowne Plaza and Younes Conference Center North will open in January 2022.

With most of UNK’s student body home for the summer when the flood hit, the school reopened residence halls and provided lodging, meals and transportation for displaced visitors, residents and hotel staff. Springing into action to help the community was not difficult for the institution equipped to educate 6,300 students from all 93 Nebraska counties, 48 U.S. states and 51 countries this semester. The university has always worked to benefit Kearney.

On land that UNK has owned since 1965, the new University Village in west Kearney includes Village Flats apartments where residents already are living, and an early childhood education center staffed by UNK students. A regional engagement and alumni center is planned in partnership with an Omaha developer, and UNK is partnering with the City of Kearney on a new tennis complex. Retail space and additional housing is planned for the $48 million project. A public art sculpture flanked by four performance stages will be the entertainment epicenter of the village’s Central Green. Like the many roads that meet in Kearney, the sculpture’s arches represent an intersection for travelers.

Kearney’s busiest roadway takes 20,000 I-80 motorists under The Archway each day. The one-of-a-kind bridge-museum is dedicated to the adventurers who followed the Great Platte River Road. The second-longest escalator in Nebraska takes visitors to the second story where interactive displays educate about Native American migration routes, pioneer trails, the Mormon handcart companies, the Lincoln Highway and I-80. A radar gun aimed at the road displays the speeds of automobiles passing underneath.

Interstate traffic was diverted through Kearney on Aug. 16, 1999, as the 1,500-ton attraction was rolled into place overnight. Recovered now from a $60 million debt, misgivings die hard, but they are dying. Children who visited during school field trips have grown up and are now bringing their own children to The Archway, and once-skeptical parents and grandparents are coming, too. People from all over the U.S. sign the guestbook every day.

“The Archway has always been popular with visitors. Now our residents are warming up to it,” said staffer Mark Foradori. “They are excited to show friends and family this Nebraska history that took place right here.”

Well into its second century, Kearney is still a meeting place for pioneers and others traveling the Great Platte River Road.

 

Kearney Masterpiece Growing Downtown

The Museum of Nebraska Art (MONA) is an impressive artistic creation. The granite and limestone former 1911 Kearney post office towers over downtown’s “The Bricks” entertainment district. Columns flank the entryway at the top of 12 steps. The lobby shines with marble. Galleries on all three levels showcase artists from Nebraska and beyond.

A thorough exploration takes hours. As spacious as the museum is – 28,000 square feet – MONA is only able to display a small part of the state’s official visual arts collection at any one time. Supporters of Nebraska art have a new vision for MONA and plans are being made for a major renovation, restoration and expansion.

Larry Peterson, one of the trio of local art professors including Gary Zaruba and Jack Karraker, pioneered the idea of a Nebraska art museum before the collection’s original 30 works had a home to hang in. He also started the Museum’s ARTreach program that takes art to towns and cities throughout Nebraska. Peterson founded Kearney’s Art in the Park event 50 years ago and is the originator of the Kearney Art Guild.   

“The original post office has been the perfect, stately home for MONA,” Peterson said. “Now with more than 5,000 paintings, sculptures, textiles and other art in the collection, we’ve outgrown the building. When it is done, the new MONA will be a masterpiece.”

Art enthusiasts interested in supporting the project can contact Beth Klipping at (308) 865-8968. MONA is at 2401 Central Ave. in Kearney. (308) 865-8559.