A million cranes, Buffalo Bill's ranch, and a Stonehenge made of cars
A west-to-east traverse of central and western Nebraska, anchored on three of the most distinctive landscapes on the High Plains. KAIA Alliance Municipal is three miles south of Carhenge — a full-scale replica of Stonehenge made from 38 gray-painted American cars, half-buried as standing stones with welded lintels across the top, built in 1987 by Jim Reinders as a memorial to his father. The site sits alone in the Nebraska Sandhills (the largest sand-dune ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere), free and open from sunrise to sunset. Southeast to KLBF North Platte Regional and Buffalo Bill's Scout's Rest Ranch — the Second Empire mansion and Wild West rehearsal barn where William Cody anchored his global touring spectacle from 1886 onward. East along the Platte to KGRI Central Nebraska Regional at Grand Island: every March, 80% of the world population of sandhill cranes — about a million birds — funnels through the 80-mile Platte corridor between North Platte and Grand Island, roosting on the river's shallow braided sandbars at night and feeding in the cornfields by day. Sandhill cranes have been migrating this way for 10 million years.