August-September 2022 • Nebraskaland 35
district is operating its hydroelectric plant below Kearney
Reservoir, which draws water from the Platte River near Elm
Creek.
The roughly 100-member Kearney Whitewater Association
spearheaded development of the trail. Its founding members,
a grassroots group of a dozen or so individuals who simply
enjoy paddling, met at a local watering hole in 2011 to
discuss resurrecting the idea of a water trail and whitewater
park that was born and died in the previous decade. Members
donated thousands of hours to help clear 20 tons of trash, car
bodies and other debris from the bed and banks of the creek,
and the group split the cost of building the put-in and take-
out points with the city.
Their ultimate goal, however strange it may have sounded
at the time, was to build what was part of their name: a
whitewater park. They funded a feasibility study with a
Colorado company to see if such a park was even possible.
When the study found it was, they helped fund project
design and worked with the Kearney Area Community
Foundation to raise the money needed to cover the $700,000
cost of the park, working through a "brutal" two-year stretch
that included severe fl ooding on the creek in 2019 and the
COVID-19 Pandemic that started in 2020. In the end, they
raised $260,000 from grants and foundations, and $112,000
from individuals in the community — including $40,000 from
the core group of KWA board members — for the whitewater
features and the water trail. Along with it, the city of Kearney
committed $400,000 to the projects.
"I think really, up until a year ago, it still seemed like we
were making this whole thing up, like it was never going
to happen," said Carson Rowh, a whitewater paddler and
founding member of the whitewater association. "I'm still
pinching myself to be honest. It's beautiful."
The Course
The whitewater park includes two drop structures above
and below Second Avenue constructed this past winter
with limestone boulders and rock trucked in from a quarry
in Weeping Water and held in place with sheet piling and
cement. The structures form a V across the creek channel,
pooling water above them. As water rushes over the structure
and drops into a hole below, it turns back on itself and creates
a foam-topped wave. Unlike waves in the ocean, however,
these don't move. But experienced kayakers can paddle in
from eddies on either side of the drop and ride the wave like
Greyson Peterson of Columbus jumps into the wave below a
drop structure on a body board. He came to test the waters
with his grandfather, Bob, of Norfolk.
