Photo of the Day 168

Chimney Rock, Nebraska, 2000

Photograph by Jim Richardson

Twilight descends on Chimney Rock, a 325-foot (100-meter) geological formation in Nebraska's North Platte River valley. In the first half of the 19th century, scores of emigrants traveling west on the Oregon Trail passed this famous landmark, originally called "Elk Penis" by Native Americans before it was renamed by white settlers.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "The Way West," September 2000, National Geographic magazine)