Nebraska Treeworks

About Nebraska Treeworks

The cottonwoods and elms along the Loup River in Columbus carry a particular kind of quiet on a cold, clear morning, their bare branches glazed thin with ice and catching whatever light comes up over the rail yard to the east. Nebraska Treeworks spends its winters on the ground beneath those same trees, clearing the driveways and walkways of the older neighborhoods where the biggest shade trees grow, streets where a canopy that shelters a yard from July sun also drops enough leaf litter and shade to hold ice longer come January. The crew makes its way through those tree-lined blocks near downtown, shoveling sidewalks to the concrete and laying salt where overhanging branches keep the pavement in shadow most of the day. Riverside properties near the Loup tend to collect a heavier, wetter snow than streets farther inland, and the crew adjusts for it, making a second pass where the first one packed down instead of clearing. By midmorning the same streets that looked frozen solid at sunrise are bare enough for the next school bus to make its run without trouble.