The Bohemian Alps  . . .

is a region of rolling loess hills that sits like an overturned basket on the table of eastern Nebraska. The hills were formed when the last ice age ended and thick windblown deposits of light yellowish colored silt accumulated at the retreating margins of the ice sheets.

Today the Bohemian Alps is home to a great many small farms and cattle operations. Because the terrain is so hilly and cut by so many drainages it is not conducive to center pivot or gravity irrigation. It has escaped the fate of the flatlands nearby.

A visitor driving the gravel roads in western Saunders or eastern Butler counties will notice many Czech names on the mailboxes or in the rural cemeteries. Many families are still on farms settled by their immigrant forebears in the 1870s and 1880s.

In the spring of 2017 I began making irregular trips every few weeks to photograph in the region in color with large format cameras. As in my previous rural Nebraska photographic explorations I’m drawn to the streams, steel bridges, old farms and how the land looks with the changing of the seasons.

MF