Welcome to Grand Island

Hall County offers quality of life, elbow room

If you look out your back door, these are some things you will not see in Hall County: a temperate climate, major professional sports teams, the coast, the mountains, New York, California or Washington, D.C.

If you want to know what you will find, keep reading the "Arrival & Survival Guide" you have in your hands. Then keep it nearby when you need to find them again.

Here's a hint: You are two pages into a wealth of knowledge and information, details about the part of the world we call home and a portrait of why we do.

Unfortunately, some believe the seven items in the first paragraph to be the sole criteria to confer status on a place to live.

They are mistaken.

Having lived 10 years in Lincoln and 10 in Los Angeles, comparing Hall County to LA or Omaha or even Kearney is an inevitable debate, but a fairly useless enterprise.

People choose to live where they do for a variety of reasons: family, career, recreation, education or convenience. And every place has its good and bad points.

As you'll find in this guide, from Alda to Wood River to Cairo to Doniphan to the hub of Grand Island, Hall County is rich in a lifestyle that makes us not only choose to live here but decide to stay as well.

Elbow room is at a premium in Hall County, even with 57,000 plus of us, but alongside our small-town, rural roots are some amenities you find in larger cities too, from entertainment to cuisine to shopping.

Throw in quality education, a deep respect for history and plenty of opportunities for recreation -- including a spectacular water park and a spanking new events center-- and Hall County, without mountains or oceans or skyscrapers, begins to come into attractive relief.

We of course already know that, or should. Three times Grand Island has been named an All-American City. Thousands flock to the area to see millions of sandhill cranes on their annual migration north. The Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer south of Grand Island is a gem, a living reflection of Hall County a century or more ago and the spirit that settled the place.

We look back at our ourselves fondly, but we look ahead with great anticipation and hope too.

The Heartland Events Center, which opened in August 2006, is Grand Island's newest attraction. Sure to be a huge attraction, the HEC brings sports, concerts, trade shows and conventions to Hall County, making the area even more of a destination. Grand Island's stunning retail base already brings thousands here each week.

All that has been enough to make us want to live here and decide to stay here. But we still pale in comparisons to bigger cities on the coasts.

Unless you do some research first-hand.

I've weathered plenty of jokes from my Los Angeles pals (and some even closer to home in Omaha and Lincoln) about living where snow can bury a vehicle to its door handles that will be too hot to open six months later. Where you can drive across town in 10 minutes. Where change is slow.

Then they visit and find a place with deep roots and straight priorities. One LA friend wanted to come back and open a hardware store. Another thought she should leave her huge Century City law firm for an office and a shingle and Nebraska sunsets.

They always have fun. They are always are a little shocked that they did. They always talk about real people in a real place doing real things.

That's why you should not only look out your back door, you should walk out of it too. Pack this "Arrival & Survival Guide" and become a local tourist, exploring and appreciating this place we choose to call home.

George Ayoub is senior writer at The Independent.