The wild and woolly first years of the Nebraska Territory is the subject of Nebraska historian Jeff Barnes’s “Florence Edition” presentation of “The (Mad) Queen of the Prairies: Frenzied First Years of the Nebraska Territory” at the Lied Winside Public Library on Thursday, June 15, at 7 p.m.
The talk is sponsored by Humanities Nebraska. It is free and open to the public.
Nebraska’s approach to establishing a territory was unusual to say the least, Barnes said. “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 capitol 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, and Extra Innings: The Story of Modisett Ball Park.
He is currently updating his first book, Forts of the Northern Plains, for the University of Nebraska Press with publication in May 2024.
