The University of Nebraska's Cedar Point Biological Station in Ogallala, Nebraska, is celebrating its 50th year. Opened in 1975, using the facilities of a former Girl Scout camp, Cedar Point has each year since then hosted summer biology courses, geology courses, art courses, and experiential learning by children of many ages. Researchers staying there have studied everything from soil mycorrhizae and beetle intestinal parasites to prairie grass genetics and barn swallow social behavior.
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| Goodall Lodge, Cedar Point Biological Station 1976 |
I arrived there in its second summer, to teach a course in ecology and start grassland research projects. 49 years later, it is difficult to remember how basic life at the Station was in the 70s. The Station had cabins for students but few places for teachers, researchers, or staff (the cook, mainly) to stay. The early Station Directors improvised. One year I stayed in a student cabin, then in a building the Girl Scouts used for first aid, repurposed as housing for five, another year in a small, very old trailer (the "Yellow Trailer;" I caught 2 mice a night, for 3 weeks.) We had only the lodge basement for both teaching and research. Two courses were taught simultaneously and the instructors carefully negotiated the use of the one laboratory; rainy days were hard because both classes needed to be inside. Handouts and tests were mimeographed before we got a copier. A single pay phone was our connection to the rest of the world--no cell phones, no internet. The student cabins had neither electricity nor air conditioning.
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| Cedar Point the white trailer was the research lab, about 1980 |
What we did have was a wonderful natural laboratory. Lakes and streams. Sandhills prairie, mixed and shortgrass prairie, forest patches, and marshes. It was place which had received little attention from biologists due to the distance to population centers (Lincoln 280 miles, Denver 210 miles). Finding teaching experiments or research problems was easy, choosing between them was hard.
Summer in Ogallala was and is hot and sunny, the humidity low. The prairie winds gently cool you. Rain is infrequent and usually late in the day. From a high place the lightly grazed grasslands run for miles; in a creek you can wade through knee high grasses, surrounded by dragonflies. The region is more built-up today, but still a remarkable place to look at midcontinent native ecosystems.
Overview of the Station in 1976:
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| Cedar Point Biological Station 1976 |
Contrast this old photo to the current one on the University of Nebraska website: cedarpoint.unl.edu The recent photo was taken from the opposite side, but except for the Lodge, student cabins seen behind it, and buildings 1&2, mostly hidden in the trees in the modern photo, all the buildings have been added since 1976. (Caveat: a garage and storage building, not visible in my photo, were also there in 1976 and still remain, likely much renovated). In 50 years, Cedar Point Biological Station has replaced the mousy old trailers and built cabins for researchers and visitors, as well as a research building and a classroom building. The Directors have tried to keep the original look--log-sided buildings--but when necessary, chose function over appearance.
I taught and did research at the Station for 15 years, was Director for 2, returned annually for another 20 following the fate of colonies of the western harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex occidentalis, (blog about that project link). I was there for many changes and I find it hard to remember what is was like before. I had not been there since Covid, when I returned this summer; I found new retaining walls, better roads and paths, and several new cabins.
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| a cedar cabin at Cedar Point |
The Station still seems rustic coming from city life, but it has in fact changed with the times, with air conditioning, internet, good laboratory facilities, vegetarian options at meals....
The location remains fascinating. South of Cedar Point are grasslands on a mix of gravelly river-deposited soils and fine loess (wind-deposited) soils. To the north, beyond the river basin, stretch the Nebraska Sand Hills, a complex dune system with a distinctive sand-adapted ecosystem (Nebraska sandhills prairie). For many taxa, western and eastern organisms meet at Cedar Point, for example eastern meadowlark (Sturnella magna) and western meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta), Virginia creeper (Parthanocissus quinquinervis) and prickly pear cacti (Opuntia species).
On the spur of the moment, I gave a plant walk while I was there August 17, and, in a half hour, had a half dozen questions it would be fun to investigate. For example is there currently a hybrid population of eastern red cedar, Juniperus virginiana, and Rocky Mountain juniper, Juniperus scopulorum, in the canyons surrounding the Station, as was reported 40 years ago?
Two more old photos: the student cabins in 1976, women on the near (west) side of the tree-filled ravine, men on the far side.
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| Cedar Point from the top of the hill, 2016 |
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| Wash house 2024, original and looking unchanged, but much renovated inside. |
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