Norfolk

Norfolk — pronounced “NOR-fork” by everyone local enough to correct you the first time you say it wrong — sits where the Elkhorn and North Fork rivers meet in northeast Nebraska, a town of about twenty-five thousand built on grain elevators, a meatpacking plant, and a downtown that somehow avoided being hollowed out the way so many prairie main streets have. Lia and I stopped for what was supposed to be a lunch break on a longer drive and stayed the night, mostly because the woman running our motel gave us a list of places to eat that turned out to be exactly right.

Norfolk Avenue and the Carson connection

Johnny Carson grew up here, and the town leans into it without going overboard — a historical marker outside his boyhood home, a downtown mural, and a small display in the public library rather than a full-blown shrine. We walked Norfolk Avenue in the evening light, past a mix of still-occupied Art Deco storefronts and a beautifully restored 1920s theater marquee, and had dinner at a supper club that’s been serving the same broiled steaks since before Carson left for California. The waitress, when we mentioned we were just passing through, brought us a second dessert on the house.

The riverwalk and Ta-Ha-Zouka Park

In the morning we walked the Elkhorn riverwalk that threads through Ta-Ha-Zouka Park on the edge of downtown, cottonwoods leaning over the slow brown water and a handful of fishermen already out with lines in. It’s a modest park by any big-city standard, but it does the job small-town parks are supposed to do — give people somewhere shaded to sit on a hot day — and Lia pointed out that we hadn’t seen another tourist the entire time, just locals walking dogs and pushing strollers, which felt like the whole point of stopping here in the first place.

Getting There

Norfolk has a small regional airport (OFK) with limited connecting flights, but most people drive in from Omaha, about two hours east on US-275, or from Sioux Falls, roughly two and a half hours north. A car is essential for reaching anything outside the compact downtown core.