North Platte, Nebraska

North Platte began as a winter camp for Union Pacific Railroad crews pushing west across Nebraska in eighteen sixty-six. Chief Engineer Grenville Dodge platted the town that November, and it grew fast: within a year it was a supply depot, a division point, and a roundhouse town straddling the Platte River. Buffalo Bill Cody called North Platte home for nearly three decades, staging a Fourth of July blowout in eighteen eighty-two at his Scout's Rest Ranch that is widely credited as the birth of the modern rodeo.

The Union Pacific never left. Today North Platte is home to Bailey Yard, the largest railroad classification yard on earth, covering two thousand eight hundred fifty acres and handling more than fourteen thousand rail cars every single day. A glass tower above the yard lets visitors watch the choreography of freight from eight stories up.