24 Nebraskaland • April 2024
Smiley Canyon Scenic Drive has a
colorful history, beginning with its
planning. Few who visit the drive today
realize what a challenging engineering
feat it was.
The road was not only born as a way
for locals to finally have a reliable route
between Crawford and neighboring
Harrison, but it also was part of a larger
concept with excitement propagating
well beyond northwestern Nebraska.
The road would be a vital link for what
was being billed as the Washington
Highway. Named for the nation's first
president, the new automobile route
would connect the Atlantic to the Pacific
and provide a vital link for easterners to
visit Yellowstone National Park. Today,
it's known as U.S. Highway 20.
Prior to Smiley Canyon Road's
construction, locals traveled "two
miserable trails of the poorest sort which
followed White River and Soldier Creek,"
wrote one reporter.
In 1914, Col. Chas Thatcher, a national
road expert, visited northwestern
Nebraska while being tasked with
marking a route for the Washington
Highway. He wrote that he much
preferred creating a course along Soldier
Creek — long before it was the federal
wilderness area of today — instead of
Smiley Canyon. For reasons not found in
research for this article, the latter option
was chosen, though.
The road brought so much anticipation
that even the arrival of road equipment
in 1920 garnered headlines. Gov. Samuel
McKelvie visited the construction site in
1922.
The 2-mile canyon posed great
challenges for both drainage and grade.
Workers used 15 tons, that's 30,000
pounds, of TNT for the removal of 65,000
yards of material to create the road bed.
About 20,000 yards of that was solid
rock.
About a month after its June opening,
the first of many vehicle crashes was
A buck pronghorn grazes near the
canyon's lower entrance.
