Concept
Nebraska
Overview
Nebraska ( nə-BRASK-ə) is a triple-landlocked state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders South Dakota to the north; Wyoming to the west; Colorado to the southwest; Kansas to the south; and Missouri to the southeast and Iowa to the east, both across the Missouri River. Nebraska is the 16th-largest state by land area, with just over 77,347 square miles (200,330 km2). As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,961,504, and was estimated to be 2,018,006 in 2025, it is the 38th-most populous state and the eighth-least densely populated. Nebraska's capital is Lincoln, and its most populous city is Omaha, which is on the Missouri River.
Nebraska was admitted into the United States in 1867, two years after the end of the American Civil War. The Nebraska Legislature is unlike any other American legislature in that it is unicameral, and its members are elected without any official reference to political party affiliation. Nebraska is one of only two states (Maine being the other) that divide electoral college votes by district, and is not winner-take-all state-wide.
Nebraska is composed of two major land regions: the Dissected Till Plains and the Great Plains. The Dissected Till Plains region consists of gently rolling hills and contains the state's largest cities, Omaha and Lincoln. The Great Plains region, occupying most of western Nebraska, is characterized by treeless prairie. Eastern Nebraska has a humid continental climate while western Nebraska is primarily semi-arid. The state has wide variations between winter and summer temperatures; the variations decrease in southern Nebraska. Violent thunderstorms and tornadoes occur primarily during spring and summer, and sometimes in autumn. The Chinook wind tends to warm the state significantly in the winter and early spring.
Indigenous peoples, including Omaha, Missouria, Ponca, Pawnee, Otoe, and various branches of the Lakota (Sioux) tribes, lived in the region for thousands of years before European discovery and exploration. The state is crossed by many historic trails, including that of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad through Nebraska and passage of the Homestead Acts led to rapid growth in the population of American settlers in the 1870s and 1880s and the development of a large agriculture sector for which the state is known to this day.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
The country eastward of these Scythian agriculturists, when one crosses the river Panticapes, nomads occupy, who neither sow at all nor plough; and all this country is destitute of trees except Hylæa. The nomads occupy a tract eastward for fourteen days' journey, stretching to the river Gerrhus. Beyond the Gerrhus are the parts called the Royal, and the most valiant and numerous of the Scythians, who deem all other…
Herodotus, The Boys' and Girls' Herodotus
States what Nebraska is.
D. 1855, and Ending on the Sixteenth Day of March, A. D. 1855_; and _Journal of the House of Representatives, of the First Regular Session of the General Assembly of the Territory of Nebraska ..._. These three official publications record quite fully the work of the first Nebraska Legislature, which consisted of a council of 13 and a house of 26 members. From later in the same year the Library owns still another…
Roger J. Trienens, Pioneer Imprints from Fifty States
Names Nebraska several times; opens on Nebraska.
In the earth, the dry land and congregated waters, as a sea, a river, a flood, are put for the people of several regions, nations, and dominions; embittering of waters, for great affliction of the people by war and persecution; turning things into blood, for the mystical death of bodies politic, that is, for their dissolution; the overflowing of a sea or river, for the invasion of the earth politic, by the people of…
Isaac Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John
Close in meaning to Nebraska; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Nebraska
Related ideas
- Library of Congress
- Seven Years' War
- Great Depression
- United States House of Representatives
- Muslims
- State-owned enterprise
- Native Americans in the United States
- African Americans
- Indigenous peoples of the Americas
- United States Senate
- Protestantism
- German Americans
- PBS
- Progressive tax
- The New York Times
- Abraham Lincoln
- Pew Research Center
- Libertarian Party (United States)
- George W. Bush
- Buddhists
- European colonization of the Americas
- Lyndon B. Johnson
- Catholic Church
- Age of Discovery
Place in the tradition
Part of Descriptivist theory of names.