Nebraska's "Story Catcher"

"The frontier historian is always faced with a great many divergences in the accounts of old timers and eye witnesses long after the fact. Memory plays strange tricks, as do our emotions. We recall what our point of view wants us to recall. Nothing more, or different."

— Mari Sandoz

The Center honors author-historian Mari Sandoz, who was born on the Sandoz family homestead on the Mirage Flats near the Niobrara River south of Hay Springs on May 11, 1896, to Swiss immigrants Jules and Mary Sandoz. The family moved in 1910 to another homestead 33 miles south of Gordon in the Nebraska Sandhills.

Sandoz, who studied at what is now Chadron State College and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, won national fame in 1935, when her first book, "Old Jules," a biography of her father, was published after it had been rejected 13 times. She went on to write 23 books on the High Plains region of the American West. She died in 1966 and is buried at the Sandhills homestead.

Sandoz was inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame in the State Capitol Building in 1975-76 and was inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center's Hall of Great Westerners in Oklahoma City in February 1998.

Eminent historian Dr. James C. Olson said, "The more Mari Sandoz is studied, the more her reputation will be enhanced." Author Alan Wilkinson of Yorkshire, England, has called Sandoz "the best Western writer of them all," particularly "when she writes about the landscape and the epic struggles of 'her' people."