Platte River
Braided Nebraska river that guided the westward trails
Pioneers joked that the Platte River was a mile wide at the mouth and only six inches deep, and the line still captures it. The river forms just east of the city of North Platte, Nebraska, where the North Platte and South Platte meet, and runs about 310 miles (500 km) across the state to the Missouri River at Plattsmouth. Counting the North Platte, the system stretches more than 1,050 miles (1,690 km) from the Colorado Rockies. Along most of its length the Platte is a braided river, a broad sandy bed laced with shallow channels and islands.
Its valley was the great road west. The Oregon, California and Mormon trails all followed the Platte across Nebraska, because its flat floodplain offered water, grass and an easy grade toward the mountains. French traders called it la rivière plate, the flat river, and the Otoe name for it, meaning flat water, gave Nebraska its name. Each spring the central Platte hosts one of North America's great wildlife gatherings, as hundreds of thousands of sandhill cranes stop to feed in nearby fields and roost on its sandbars. The endangered whooping crane also stops here on its migration.