After completing Logan County in Colorado, I drove back north into Nebraska and worked my way to the town of Kimball and Interstate-80, where I went west about 20-odd miles to the Wyoming border and the town of Pine Bluffs. From here I went north on WY-215, including a 15-minute break while a long, slow train passed through the town. I took some local roads east a couple of miles to the Nebraska border, where the three candidate areas for the Banner highpoint lie.

The first two are right along the road, two small areas of the same little hill. The road north, County Road 1, tops out at these areas. I scampered up both areas, walking a bit east on each to make sure I hit any candidate bumps. The southern area is clearly higher than the northern area. Nevertheless, the entire effort cost me just 15 minutes, and I went north about 4 miles to gain the last, and biggest, area, a gentle hill amid grassy farmland.

From CR-1 I found CR-16, and I went east to where it topped out, north of the highpoint hill. A parallel row of small trees and shrubs leads up the hill. I walked the unfenced, unposted land about 0.4 mile to the top, where I looked around then returned back to my vehicle. The land belongs to the Malm family, so I name the hill after them. It may very well be the true highpoint of the county.

From here I took some backroads through central Banner County to its county seat and only town, Harrisburg. The town only has about 60 people and just the barest hints of an economy. I blinked and missed half the town. But the backroads drive was very pretty, passing through a valley hemmed in by some fairly impressive sabdstone towers and bluffs. Shortly I was back on the main highway (NE-71) and heading north to my next objective, the western Wildcat Hills in Scotts Bluff County. Banner County is somewhat famous for being the home to a number of underground missiles during the Cold War. The county is mostly farms and numbers less than a thousand people total. I would assume most of these silos have been decommissioned and filled in, but maybe a few remain.