Willa Cather came from Virginia to Webster County in 1883 at the age of nine, and Nebraska’s vast open prairies left a lasting impression on her. She recalled the country as mostly wild pasture, as naked as the back of a hand, and remembered being little, homesick, and lonely until that shaggy grass country gripped her with a passion she could never shake. Her life’s work became portraying how pioneers tamed the wild land. The 610 acre Willa Cather Memorial Prairie preserves an example of the native grassland that once covered Nebraska. Throughout the summer, numerous wildflowers grow among tall native grasses in an ever-changing display of color, and prairie life flourishes there as it did before the first settlers came. The prairie was purchased by the Nature Conservancy with a grant from the Woods Charitable Fund of Lincoln, Nebraska.