Pawnee Pioneer Trails

Imagine yourselves as the first people to enter this big land of rock, sky, and living things. Pawnee Pioneer Trails Scenic and Historic Byway offers visitors a chance to, if only for a moment, feel as though they were back in time. Experience the time of the Cowboy West, The Explorers, Fur Trappers and Ancient Mammoth Hunters. It may even take you back to the times before mankind, when Creatures long extinct inhabited the land.

This region is a vast open textbook of nature with its own distinct and fragile beauty, the result of a landscape sculpted by geologic forces, whose effects have been held tenaciously in check by hardy and resilient vegetation. Traveling across the Byway, one may imagine how this short grass prairie was viewed by Native Americans, frontiersmen, early cattlemen, 19th and early 20th century homesteaders, and those who faced the Dust Bowl and Great Depression of the 1930's.

Today's stewards of the prairie include farmers and ranchers, the US Forest Service, and an increasing number of former urbanites.

The Byway offers historic attractions and recreation areas along the roadways. Visitors can experience solitude and explore nature through bird watching, wildlife study, photography, and hiking.

Simply driving along the Byway, visitors encounter pleasant agricultural communities while traveling through 100 million years of geologic deposition artfully exposed and rearranged by wind and water.

Just to let you know, you'll be seeing Lots of Blue Skies, The open range of the Pawnee National Grassland, And its wide array of Wildlife. There is also a prime bird watching area, last but definitely not least is The Famous Pawnee Buttes.

A few Communities that you will see by following the Pawnee Pioneer Trails. Sterling, Fort Morgan, Stoneham, New Raymer, Briggsdale, Ault and Grover.