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Lincoln
Capital of Nebraska, on the eastern prairie
Lincoln rose from the open prairie of southeastern Nebraska, chosen in 1867 as the capital of the new state and renamed for the recently assassinated president. The site, near salt flats that early boosters hoped would prove valuable, sat on gently rolling grassland with no major river — a capital placed to draw settlement into the interior rather than to exploit a harbor or crossing.
The salt never amounted to much, but the railroads and the University of Nebraska did, and Lincoln grew into the state's second-largest city and a center of government and education. The surrounding country is fertile farm and ranch land at the eastern edge of the Great Plains, where the wetter prairie of the east begins drying toward the High Plains west.