Nebraska is both a railway corridor and an alternative route across the American interior in Phileas Fogg’s journey. The state’s towns, river, and open prairie shape the party’s movement toward Omaha; when delays make speed urgent, the same landscape allows them to leave the railway’s longer course behind and travel by sail sledge.

The railway route through Nebraska

The train enters Nebraska at eleven and passes near Sedgwick before reaching Julesburg, on the southern branch of the Platte River. The journey then follows the river corridor: after Fort McPherson, the railway runs along the Platte’s southern branch, and at nine the train stops at North Platte, a town situated between the river’s two arms, which join around it. The narration gives this route a geographic logic as well as a timetable, presenting the river as a feature that organizes the railway’s passage through the state.

Julesburg also connects Nebraska’s present-day travel to the history of railroad expansion. The Union Pacific Railroad was inaugurated there on October 23, 1867. The account recalls two powerful locomotives and nine cars carrying invited guests, a celebration that included cheers, fireworks, a special newspaper printed aboard the train, and an imitation battle performed by the Sioux and Pawnees. The episode casts the railroad as an instrument intended to connect settlements and cities across the plains, including places that had not yet come into existence.

Prairie and the alternate route

The railway’s path across Nebraska follows the right bank of the Platte, passing through Great Island, Columbus, Schuyler, and Fremont on its way to Omaha. When Phileas Fogg’s party needs to make up lost time, Mudge’s wind sledge takes a more direct line across the prairie, cutting a chord across the arc described by the railway. The contrast makes clear that the rail network’s route is not simply a measure of distance: its bends and fixed course can be slower than travel across open ground.

The frozen Platte removes one possible obstacle to the sledge, and the prairie is described as flat and clear of obstructions. Its speed nevertheless depends on fragile conditions: an accident or a change in the wind could imperil the journey. The strong breeze holds, and the metallic lashings secure the mast as the sledge races onward. Nebraska’s winter landscape thus becomes a temporary transport system, but one dependent on weather and equipment rather than the schedules and tracks of the railway.

Omaha as a transport junction

Omaha is the Pacific Railroad’s terminus and the point where the party can reconnect with eastbound rail travel. It is linked to Chicago by the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad, whose line passes fifty stations. When the sledge party reaches the station, a train is ready to depart; they board with no time to see the town. From there, their journey continues across Iowa and toward Chicago, making Nebraska’s endpoint a hinge between the overland crossing and the onward route east.

The party’s passage gives the state a practical rather than touristic significance. Nebraska is encountered through stations, riverbanks, mileage, and connections, not through a stop for sightseeing. Its importance lies in how movement is organized there: the railway carries the travelers along an established corridor, the sledge cuts across that corridor when time is short, and Omaha restores access to the wider rail network.