NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: https://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/1542285
December 2025 • Nebraskaland 37 trees, forest-grown walnuts shoot straight and tall in a race to reach the canopy and sunlight. In the shade below, their lower branches receive little light, die and eventually fall away. Trees prime for harvest have straight trunks for at least the first 18 feet, with few branches, knots or other defects, and are at least 24 inches in diameter a few feet above the ground. These rarities can bring landowners $2,000 to $3,000 apiece. The most valuable walnuts Karloff has seen in Nebraska grow in Hummel Park in north Omaha along the Missouri River. The largest of these giants have trunks 30 inches in diameter, and a logger once valued a single tree at $10,000. Most walnuts in Nebraska, however, are not prime quality and bring far less value. For example, an elderly neighbor of mine had about 40 walnut trees in a woodlot outside Aurora. The best of them had straight, branchless trunks for about the first 12 feet and were 15 inches in diameter. Most had narrower, crooked or knotty trunks. He contracted with a logger to cut the trees and was paid only a few thousand dollars, a price I thought was well below their habitat and aesthetic value. Not long ago, when working with woodland owners, Karloff completed 10 to 12 walnut timber appraisals a year, relying on a few southeastern Nebraska loggers to harvest the trees. Many of those loggers have since retired and not been replaced. Today, he does only three or four appraisals annually, with loggers now also coming from Iowa, Missouri and Kansas. He requires that loggers cut only a few of the larger, high-quality trees, leaving some for the future. Some low-quality, less valuable trees are also harvested. Woodworkers have long favored walnuts from the drier Great Plains, where slower tree growth produces tighter rings and darker wood than in wetter regions to the east. There, faster growth yields wider rings and lighter-colored wood. Dark walnut is especially prized for veneer, a thin slice of wood applied to a base material such as plywood to give the appearance of solid walnut in furniture and cabinetry. Most prime American walnut logs, including those from Nebraska, are shipped to Europe and Asia, where they are highly valued and processed into veneer. Lower-quality logs from the state are milled locally into lumber for furniture, cabinets, gunstocks and other uses. With no woodworking skills, my connection to black walnuts is personal. I admire the fine grain of my shotgun stock on autumn hunts, enjoy walks beneath the sprawling old trees at Walnut Grove Park in Millard and still crack and eat walnuts on my driveway. N A fox squirrel, determined to reach the nutmeats within, gnaws its way through a tough walnut shell.