6 Buildings in Nebraska That Are Unlike Anything Else Around

Nebraska is often viewed through the lens of the interstate—a flat, rhythmic procession of cornfields, prairies, and cattle ranches. But if you stop looking at the horizon and start looking at the architecture, the state reveals a surprisingly eccentric personality. We are hunting down the strangest buildings in Nebraska—structures that break the mold of the Great Plains. From a modernist temple floating on a moat to a Scottish castle on the Midwestern plains, these six unusual buildings in Nebraska prove that Cornhuskers aren't afraid to build something worthy of pulling your car over for a gander. Each structure tells its own story, revealing a new perspective of Nebraska's creative character.

1. Holy Family Shrine - Gretna

• Cost: Free, but donations are accepted
• Need to know: Family-friendly. ADA accessible. Open until 5 p.m. every day, and until 9 p.m. every first Friday, but closed for major holidays. You'll need about an hour to walk through the visitor center, gift shop, and chapel.

Driving through Nebraska along Interstate 80, you will eventually pass a structure that looks like the skeleton of a prehistoric whale rising from the hills. The Holy Family Shrine, near Gretna, is a glass-and-wood chapel supported by massive, arching trusses that intertwine to form a Gothic-style vault. The genius of the design is its transparency; the walls are glass, allowing the rolling fields and the highway to become the art viewed from inside the shrine. The experience begins as soon as you walk into the visitor center lobby, where an art installation with flowing water guides your way. It functions as a spiritual rest stop, offering a moment of quiet, skeletal beauty amid the 75 miles-per-hour traffic.

2. Desert Dome - Omaha

• Cost: Free to view
• Need to know: Family-friendly. Avoid traffic and parking lot jams by visiting after the zoo closes at 5 p.m. Dome can be viewed from the parking lot.

Omaha isn't exactly known for its arid climate, which makes the sight of the Desert Dome at the Henry Doorly Zoo even more jarring. It's the world’s largest indoor desert (begging the question: how many indoor deserts are there in the world?). The structure is a colossal glazed geodesic dome that looks like a crystalline blister bursting from the ground. Inside, the 13-story structure recreates the environments of three distinct deserts—the Namib, the Red Center of Australia, and the Sonoran—complete with free-flying birds and free-roaming lizards. From the outside, though, it's a piece of weird architecture in Nebraska that glows at night and looks distinctly alien against its Midwestern backdrop.

3. Nebraska State Capitol - Lincoln

• Cost: Free admission and guided tour
• Need to know: Family-friendly. Free 2-hour parking (strictly enforced) is available on the street, which is enough time for the tour, if you choose.

Many state capitol buildings seem content to look like lesser versions of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. The state of Nebraska, however, went a different route. Completed in 1932, this "Tower of the Plains" was the first state capitol to embrace the skyscraper form. It shoots 400 feet into the air, a limestone Art Deco structure capped with a gold-tiled dome, and bedecked with mosaics and sculptures that feel more like they belong in an ancient temple than a seat of government. The base is a square cross-in-square, creating open spaces within the walls, but the tower itself is a defiant vertical stroke in a horizontal landscape that dominates the skyline for miles.

4. Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer - Grand Island

• Cost: Free to view
• Need to know: Family-friendly. Bonus: There's a historic steam locomotive in the parking lot area.

You expect log cabins in a pioneer museum. You don't expect a brutalist temple floating on a lake. Edward Durell Stone, the same architect who designed the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C, designed the main building of the Stuhr Museum. It's a stark, white concrete square, wrapped in a slender colonnade, sitting on an island and surrounded by a moat. The effect is severe but arresting. It feels like a piece of high modernism dropped into the Platte River Valley, a formal, floating monument that elevates the grit of pioneer history into something almost Grecian.

5. Joslyn Castle - Omaha

• Cost: Free to walk the gardens and grounds.
• Need to know: Family-friendly. Gardens open until sundown. Guided tours are offered every day until noon, except Tuesday and Saturday.

In the middle of Omaha's Gold Coast neighborhood, you'll find a fortress that looms more like it belongs in the Scottish Highlands. Built in 1903 for Nebraska’s first multi-millionaire, George Joslyn, this 35-room mansion is a textbook example of Scottish Baronial architecture. It features heavy limestone walls, crenulated turrets, and massive wrought-iron gates. Joslyn Castle is an aggressive display of wealth that's essentially a private citadel built during the Gilded Age that stands like a monolith among the wood-framed Victorian homes surrounding it.

6. Golden Spike Tower - North Platte

• Cost: Free to view and enter, but ticket is required for the observation decks
• Need to know: Family-friendly. ADA accessible. Has a gift shop with cool train novelty items.

Overlooking the Bailey Yard—the largest railroad classification yard in the world—stands the Golden Spike Tower. It is an odd, top-heavy structure that's essentially a glass observation box hoisted eight stories into the air on a brick stalk. It was designed to offer visitors a panoramic view of the trains, but from the ground, it looks like an airport control tower that got lost. It's an homage to industrial voyeurism: a building that exists solely to watch the endless, mechanical choreography of the rail lines below.

These structures, some of the strangest buildings in Nebraska, are a testament to the fact that the Great Plains are not devoid of human creativity. Clearly, Nebraska's architecture, like the Cornhusker State itself, is replete with stubborn individuality. These six buildings force you to slow down and acknowledge that even in the flattest places, people will always find a way to stand out. If you're ready to explore more of the state, check out the Visit Nebraska official tourism page. Or you can plan a trip to see the abandoned buildings in Nebraska that nature is currently reclaiming.