In 1873 when a young Robert Cozad (later Robert Henri) stepped off a Union Pacific Rail Road train at Willow Island, Nebraska with his family, little could he have known how much his life would be changed by his experience on the Great Plains.

When he left Nebraska eleven years later, at the age of nineteen, he was a strapping youth with a Western swagger which can still be seen in late nineteenth century photographs. Many a Robert Henri aficionado, admirers of his art, and biographers have speculated about how his Nebraska experience affected his future career.

There is no doubt that his career was guided in part by his having spent part of his most formative years on the frontier exposed to the rawness of the environment and the difficult challenges that those early settlers faced.

This is the story of Robert Henri's Nebraska experience.