About Schmidt|Great Platte River Road Archway, Kearney — The Last Stop Before Home

The Archway is impossible to miss and Warren does not miss it. It is a covered bridge of a museum thrown clean across Interstate 80 at Kearney, 1,500 tons of timber and steel spanning eight lanes of traffic, and the exhibits inside tell the story of the Great Platte River Road — the Oregon, California and Mormon trails, the Pony Express, the Lincoln Highway, all of which funnelled along this same valley.

It opened in 2000 and it is exactly the sort of earnest roadside attraction Warren works his way through on the drive back east, camera in hand, understanding nothing new about himself.

Take the exit at 3060 East 1st Street, buy the ticket, and go up into the span. Traffic runs underneath you the whole time you are walking through a hundred and fifty years of people crossing Nebraska in search of something better. Warren goes home to an empty house in Omaha and one crayon drawing from a six-year-old in Tanzania. Standing over the interstate, you can feel how thin the line is between a journey and a detour.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.