THE BIG MEDICINE TRAIL

MANY BIZARRE cargoes jolted along the old trails that wound across what is now Nebraska. Cargoes that rode the big freighter wagons, bulged the saddlebags of horsemen, or chafed the shoulders of those who carried their world on their backs.

Among the more whimsical loads toted on the Oregon Trail was Mollie Dorsey Sanford's coop of chickens. A bride of three months, Mollie at Nebraska City heard that chickens were worth $5 each at Denver. So when the Sanford-Clark party started for the Colorado gold fields in 1860, she fastened a coop with a half-dozen hens and a rooster behind her wagon.

On crossing their first stream, the rooster was drowned. Mollie wrote in her diary: "The poor rooster will not herald the coming dawn for us again. This is our first disaster." Luckily, the hens survived to produce eggs at $2 a dozen at Denver and to provide Mollie with her own little gold mine.

Fortunately, all of Mollie's disasters were light, but thousands of other travelers on the early trails were not so fortunate. Some were killed and scalped   by the Indians. Others survived the journey across Nebraska only to die of thirst or starvation on the western desert or freeze to death in the northern passes.

In the vast Nebraska Territory that once comprised all or part of six present states, that great father of all trails west was the Big Medicine Trail of the Indians. First followed by the elk, deer, wild horse, and buffalo, and later by the Indians, the Big Medicine Trail was really a network of paths crisscrossing the prairie country. Numerous feeder trails led into it from various areas, but like a modern highway, it had its major traffic patterns. The first trail of this network to gain more than local identification was the famed Louis and Clark Trail of 1803-07.

In Nebraska proper, the Big Medicine mostly followed the south side of the Platte River and was the ancestor of the Oregon Trail which was first used by early trappers and traders en route to the mountains.

Second cousin to the Oregon was the Mormon Trail. It clung to the north because religious differences and belief in multiple-marriage had brought persecution to the Mormons in the East and they sought escape from the main stream of emigration.

In 1846, on the march toward their Zion at Salt Lake, the Mormons crossed the Missouri River near Florence, Nebraska adn built their "Winter Quarters", housing a population of 3,500. Disease, privation, and winter decimated their numbers and 600 of the faithful are buried there.

After a year of farming and harvesting the main caravan moved on in 1848, taking with them 560 wagons. About 10 years later, a new group of Mormon converts from the British Isles and Europe came to America and headed west. Lacking wagons, they were advised to use handcarts. About 3,000 carts were pulled over the long, long trail from their staging area in Iowa City to Salt Lake City. Usually the men pulled with the women and children pushing, The handcarters with their 500-pound loads could make 30 miles a day, double the average distance made by a wagon train.

As late as 1857, Mormons were still going through by handcart. A splinter group came through Fort Kearny late that year and the fort commandant held them up and put them to work getting in hay and cord wood, because it was too dangerous for them to travel with winter close upon them. They worked that winter and were paid wages. In the spring they went on.

As tales of tragedy came from the Mormon Trail, so later stories of notorious characters and crimes filtered out of the Sidney-Black Hills Trail area. It 30 NEBRASKAland became the hide-out of numerous desperadoes, killers, stage, and bank robbers.

Starting due north of Sidney, this trail crossed the Oregon Trail, and passed through Cheyenne, Morrill, Box Butte, and Dawes counties. A great freighting road, it hauled supplies from the railroad at Sidney to the mining camps. Gold from the Black Hills was the lure that drew the owlhoots.

The Niobrara Trail was a natural trail that followed Nebraska's Niobrara River. Later, it was joined by a trail coming up the Elkhorn Valley, to form another route to the Black Hills.

Signs on the trails did not originate with the white men. Long before their coming, the Indians constructed their weird and mysterious Medicine Circles of buffalo skulls. Early travelers in Nebraska found these skull circles not far from the Big Medicine Trail along the Platte. They were set in the ground in huge rings, and according to the Indians, had a magic power to draw in the buffalo herds.

Fantastic and fascinating as were the Medicine Rings, some of the travelers and their doings along the Oregon Trail were even wilder. The lure of the wilderness, the lust for gold, the urge to travel, to seek adventure, and the promise of a hunter's paradise drew explorers, gamblers, scouts, soldiers, fur traders, artists, writers, and even foreign royalty.

European nobles who rode the trail included Prince Paul of Wurttemburg, Prince Maximilian of Prussia, and Captain William Drummond Stewart, a British baronet.

Stewart, Maximilian, Washington Irving, and Charles Augustus Murray were a few of the early writers who came to the Platte Valley for material. George Catlin, John James Audubon, Karl Bodmer, and Alfred Jacob Miller were among the artists who left pictorial records of the Plains Indians and Nebraska landmarks.

Miller in his water-color studies did as thorough a documentary on Indian life as a modern photographer. He was the first notable artist to travel extensively in the West and painted Indians peaceful in their lodges, on the hunt, on the trail, and on the war-path. He painted Chimney Rock, Courthouse and Jail Rocks, Ship Rock, and Scott's Bluff, all landmarks along the Oregon Trail.

A different breed of men from the artists and adventurers were the leaders of the pack trains for the fur companies. In April 1832, William Sublette started off with a hundred-horse caravan from St. Louis with JANUARY, 1967   supplies for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company on the Green River in the present state of Wyoming. In May, he was joined by Oregon-bound Nat Wyeth and his company of 50 from Boston. Together they pioneered the route which became the main line of the Oregon Trail between Independence, Missouri and the Platte River. Crossing the Missouri River in Kansas, they turned northward along the Big Blue for 40 miles, and then followed the Little Blue River to what is now Hastings, Nebraska, and on down the wide valley of the Platte. Ralph Moody, writing of this expedition, describes an incident of the trip.

"There a war party of Pawnee overtook and passed the caravan, proudly waving a few bloody scalps just lifted from their enemies, the Kansas Indians."

The combined caravans of Sublette and Wyeth plodded westward along the south bank of the Platte. To avoid quicksan, Sublette followed the river beyond the South Platte to the present borders of Colorado, then along Lodgepole Creek for 30 miles, then north across a high divide, known as the Thirty-Mile Ridge, and on to the North Platte River below Courthouse Rock. Robert Stuart had come east from Oregon along this route in 1811, but his report was virtually erased by the War of 1812. So, Wyeth's party receives credit for being the first to reach Oregon by following this trail.

Three years later, in 1836, at Bellevue, Nebraska, the Tom Fitzpatrick pack train assembled and it was, according to Moody, the strangest that ever set off for the Rockies.

"The main body was made up of 400 pack animals and 70 frontiersmen, rough, tough American mountain men, French-Canadian trappers, and Indian half-breeds. In ludicrous contrast was Sir William Drummound Stewart and his party of British sportsmen, bound for a 'rousing buffalo hunt' on the prairies. The sportsmen were accompanied by an array of men servants, gunbearers, and dogs, and traveled in several ornate wagons, each drawn by six mules in glittering harnesses. To complete the assemblage the missionaries trailed along behind."

The missionaries, the Whitmans and Spaldins, were loaded with furniture, clothing, boxes of religious books, and provisions for months. They brought 2 wagons, 14 horses, 6 mules, and 17 cattle, mostly milk cows. Much of what they brought they had to leave along the way, and reached Oregon with only half a wagon box on one axle.

Among the first white women to travel on the Oregon Trail were the wives of these missionaries. Narcissa Whitman was a beautiful blonde and excited much attention.

"Women," Moody says, "were not only a curiosity to Fitzpatrick's rough crew but the object of more than a little rough banter. Sister Spalding was shocked and appalled, but Narcissa Whitman glowed with exhilaration at the exciting adventure before her. After a few 32 NEBRASKAland days she won the admiration of the entire crew, and they watched their language in her presence. Whenever game was killed, the choicest cuts were brought to her tent. In return, the bearer's canteen was always filled with fresh milk."

Later, when the missionaries attended a fur-trading rendezvous the women were again the center of attention. Many of the mountain men had not seen a white woman in years and they were fascinated by Narcissa's beauty.

Moody wrote: "The Indians almost worshipped her. The squaws gathered in a throng, to touch their fingers to her white skin, marvel at her blue eyes, and admire her clothing."

Although Whitman had a tough time with his wagons he was not the first to take wheeled vehicles over the trail.

Tom Fitzpatrick and Robert Stuart were among the first to believe the entire route of the Oregon Trail could be traveled by wheeled vehicles. In November of 1824, Fitzpatrick urged General William H. Ashley to use a wagon train to transport supplies to the rich fur country beyond the Continental Divide. The general risked one wagon and made it.

When Captain Benjamin Bonneville took a full wagon train through in the late 1830's, the way west began to broaden. In 20 wagons, Bonneville was able to transport twice the stock carried by Sublette in 1832. By the time he reached Laramie Fork, however, he experienced the "cussedness that tried the souls of emigrants" in the shrinking of wood in hubs, spokes, and felloes so tires fell off, and wagon boxes came apart.

Gullies, canyons, hillsides, and cliffs slowed him up. He had to stop to corduroy soft spots with logs and brush, build half roadxs called dugouts, and let wagons down slopes by windlasses. When he came to unfordable rivers, he had to take the wheels off and make wagons into real prairie schooners by sheating them in hides so they could be ferried across.

Some 20 years after Bonneville, came the movie-sized trains of a hundred or more wagons. They did not always circle at night or form a horseshoe barricade into which to drive the livestock in case of an Indian attack. Instead, the wagon master made the decision about the train's night formation, using his knowledge of the terrain, the length of the stop, and the eminence of danger. Once the wagons were drawn up though into an over-lapping barricade, they did provide a powerful bulwark against attack.

Wave after wave of emigration hit the trails West. In the 1830's, the backwash of European unrest and economic upheaval sent a flood of immigrants to American shores. The potato famine in ireland also contributed to the traffic. The cities on the coast absorbed some, but many took to the wilderness on a wave of discovery. In the 1840's and early 1850's, a tidal wave of gold seekers bound for California came through, and in 1854, when the (Continued on page 98)

THE TALKING WIRE

LEGEND HAS IT that two great Indian chiefs were stationed on bluffs opposite each other. They had a conference before each mounted his great rock throne, one on Chimney Rock, the other on Scotts Bluff.

The Indians were curious about the slender, silvery wire stretched between the two rocks. The white men had said this wire could talk, but the Indians knew only man could talk. Sometimes man talked too much. Especially the white man.

And the white man lied. Time and time again he lied about what he wanted from the Indian's land. Was he lying about the "talking wire"?

Beside each of the chiefs stood a white man, telegraph operators, who said they knew the magic of the wire. And each said he would share the magic with the Indians. One chief told the telegrapher what he wanted the magic wire to say to the other chief. When each received the other's message, he immediately galloped on his fastest pony to a previously-agreed-on point.

There, the chiefs compared notes. They were astonished. The wire had no lips, no tongue, but it spoke. It said exactly what the chiefs told it to say. Surely, it had a mysterious power and the men who could command it to speak must be blessed by the gods. Telegraph wire was indeed big medicine.

The first telegraph line to cross the Missouri River into Nebraska Territory was greeted with as much wonder and excitement by Brownville citizens as by the Indian chiefs. This account appeared in the August 30,1860, edition of the Nebraska Advertiser.

"By Lightning! Telegraph to Brownville!! Time and Space Annihilated. On Tuesday last the Stebbins line of Telegraph was completed to this place."

"Wednesday evening our citizens participated in a general jollification over the event of the completion of the Telegraph Line to this point. It was decidedly the liveliest time gotten up on this city. Everybody and their friends were on hand. It was an occasion on which all, whatever might be their political or religious creed, could join and rejoice together, and they did it with a will. Bonfires, illuminations, fireballs, music, burning gunpowder, speeches, and toasts were the order of the evening. After 35 rounds were fired—one for each of the States with which we are now more closely allied, one for Nebraska and one for the Telegraph Line—Colonel Nixon was called out and addressed the crowd. Not a single incident occurred to disturb the hilarity of the occasion. It was, in words of William Shakespeare, or somebody else, a Bully time for all."

A bully time it was too when the editors of the Brownville Advertiser used the lightning line to greet the editors of the St. Joseph Gazette.

"The Advertiser sends greeting. Give us your hand. Hot as blazes; thermometer 104 in the shade. What's the news?"

The Gazette replied:

"We are most happy to return your greeting. Thermometer at 100, and rising like h--l. You ask for the news. Douglas stock fully up to the thermometer, and rising as rapidly. St. Joe. drinks Nebraska's health."

The Douglas stock might very well be up. The presidential campaign of 1860 between Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and Abraham Lincoln, resulting in the election of Lincoln, was one of the most exciting political 38 NEBRASKAland events in the history of the nation and everybody was eager to get the very latest news. Two days would be saved by extending the telegraph wires farther west. From their terminus, the Pony Express would pick up the election returns and speed them to the Pacific Coast.

Just 16 years before the telegraph line reached Brownville, the first Morse telegraph circuit opened between Washington and Baltimore to carry the message: "What has God wrought?" It was a milestone in man's attempt at instant communication.

The "talking wire" was a long stride forward in communications but it was not the first attempt at speedy transmission of messages in Nebraska.

The Dakota Indians were fine, strong warriors. They were known and respected by their enemies from the great river to the mighty mountains in the West or so the story goes. It had been a long, hard winter for the Dakotas. Game was scarce and the stores of grain had run out. The fat dogs had gone into the pot, then the thin ones.

When the first thaws came, the chief of the Dakotas led his braves out to seek buffalo. Four of the youngest braves also left the village armed with blankets instead of bows arrows. One brave went toward the rising, one to the setting sun, one to the home of cold, and one toward the warm winds. Old Ungawalla, the medicine man, had taught these young braves the secrets of the smoke words in the sky. These words would carry the news of the failure or success of the hunt back to the village. Each young brave was to keep watch all day for news from the hunting party, and return at nightfall to report.

The hunting party did not return each night. Near sundown, the braves gathered wood for two fires at JANUARY, 1967 39   their camp—the one for food and warmth, the other to report the day's findings to the young braves, watching and waiting near the home village.

The hungry village knew that the hunt had been a success long before the braves returned with great hunks of buffalo meat.

On the East Coast, the white men were also sending messages, but not by smoke. A line of cannons was set up between Buffalo and New York City. Reports from the cannon in Buffalo, were heard in Albany, then repeated down the Hudson River to New York. It took 80 minutes to send a message to New York, and a reply thundered back in about the same time.

The dream of the East was to connect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans by a telegraph line. Senator Stephen A. Douglas first presented a petition in the Senate meeting of 1852, to extend the telegraph line from the Missouri River to the Pacific. Eight years later Congress did pass a bill to get construction of the transcontinental line rolling. Edward Creighton of Omaha was the man chosen to supervise the job.

He received a government commission in 1860 to survey the land between the Missouri River and the Pacific Coast for the feasibility of establishing a telegraph line. He rode a mule over the central route from Omaha to Fort Kearny, through Laramie, South Pass, Salt Lake, and Fort Churchill to Sacramento. Creighton returned to Omaha, ready to build.

The Pacific Telegraph Company was incorporated to finance the job. Creighton purchased one-tenth of the capital stock of $1 million, at 18 cents on the dollar.

Meanwhile, the Overland Telegraph Company was building from Carson City and was to join with the Pacific Telegraph Company at Salt Lake City. It was planned to have the whole structure completed in just over a year.

Both companies raced to reach Salt Lake City first, for the winner was to retain the full tariff received for messages sent between Omaha and San Francisco, until the entire line was built. Pony Express riders would fill in the gap between the two lines until they met at Salt Lake City.

At Omaha, nearly 400 men were outfitted with rifles, Navy revolvers, and plenty of chow for the hard push across the prairie. More than 100 wagons were purchased to carry the supplies.

The first pole was set on the Fourth of July. On the same day in Washington, D.C., Congress met in special session to authorize President Lincoln to recruit an army of half a million men for the Civil War.

Builders of the transcontinental telegraph line had foreseen a serious problem. Where were they to get telegraph poles on the prairie? Some poles had to be hauled 240 miles over almost non-existent roads.

The crew was 50 miles west of Fort Kearny when they got a lucky break. Fifty miles farther west was a little canyon leading toward the Platte River. Here grew cedar trees, tall and straight, and plentiful enough to build hundreds of miles of line.

Telegraph line stretched along at the rate of five or six miles a day. On October 17,1861, the Pacific Telegraph Line reached Salt Lake City, five days ahead of the Overland Telegraph Company.

Although the Indians had given the builders very little trouble during construction they became a real problem now that the line was built.

At first the Indians had a superstitious dread of the talking wire. But they had gotten used to it now, and discovered that the wire could be very useful in tethering ponies and tying teepees together. A number of mounted braves would grab the wire, start their ponies, and tear a stretch of it loose to cart away for home building.

Once a group of them tried this during a thunderstorm. The surviving braves left the wire alone for some time after that.

Bands of Cheyenne or Sioux might burn poles by day, but their superstitions kept them away at night. So Creighton's patrols worked nights to repair the line. They rode bareback so they could out run trouble if the Indians should attack. Hooves of the horses were muffled with blankets and hammers were padded to muffle the sounds.

Creighton never allowed a break in communications to last long. He stretched a thin, thread-like wire, covered with green silk, from one end of the break to the other, through sagebrush or weeds, so that news could continue to travel from coast to coast until he could make more lasting repairs.

The line, built through Nebraska for $67 a mile, brought Creighton and his fellow financiers a quick return on their investment. It hummed with dollar-a-word messages between San Francisco and the Missouri River.

Within a week after the first message, there was a readjustment of rates. Ten words went for $5. Even at the new half-price rate, President Lincoln's annual message in 1862 cost $600.

When his Pacific Telegraph Company stock had trebled, Creighton sold one-third of his share for $85,000. He invested in the freighting business and soon netted $60,000 from one of his trains. This was just the beginning of the empire he would build.

Creighton's contributions to the development of Nebraska were many—telegraph, railroad, ranching, 40 NEBRASKAland business, and education. He became the pride of Omaha, erecting a whole block of buildings and establishing and directing the first national bank in the city.

Just three years after Creighton's death in 1874, Omaha gave birth to another communications first in Nebraska. The Union Pacific Railroad had telegraph stations all along the Platte, but the central office in Omaha needed quick connections with their freight yard as well. Louis H. Korty, assistant superintendent of telegraph operations in Omaha, had heard about Alexander Graham Bell's "electrical toy".

The dots and dashes sent over telegraph wires were intelligible to only the initiated, but Bell was able to send words over his wire which anyone could understand. It was such a fantastic accomplishment that Don Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, had to try it out. He sat across a table from Bell and held the receiver to his ear. He sprang to his feet, excitedly.

"God save us! — it talks!" he exclaimed.

That's what Korty wanted, a wire that could talk. He ordered two telephones from Boston, put one in his office and the other at the Union Pacific freight yard. The two were connected by a wire stretched across the Missouri River on the Union Pacific Railroad bridge.

Korty was farsighted, and soon the wire talked money for him and two other men. They organized the Omaha Electric Company and opened Nebraska's first commercial exchange in 1879. In 1882, Charles Morse, a Fremont settler, drove a one-horse buckboard between Omaha and Fremont, unrolling the first toll line as he went. Soon the wire was extended to Lincoln.

In the early 1900's, telephone wires were extended west into Nebraska, but not to farm homes. Only the city folks had phones but when the original patents expired, independent companies sprang up to serve rural areas.

Finally two giants emerged, the Nebraska Telephone Company which succeeded Omaha Electric, and Lincoln Telephone and Telegraph.

Many of the smaller companies were merged in the late 1950's because they couldn't stand the cost of a switch to dial exchanges. The Nebraska Telephone Company and two other firms became Northwestern Bell, but Lincoln Telephone and Telegraph stayed on to serve southeast Nebraska.

Lincoln Telephone and Telegraph ventured into a new communications area in the 1960's. The company established T-V Transmission, Inc., with plans for a new approach to providing television viewing for Nebraska's citizens. Community Antenna TV (CATV) doesn't make use of antennas perched atop houses—it transmits television pictures via a coaxial cable in the ground or anchored to telephone poles.

More than 10 years before CATV was introduced in Nebraska, WOW-TV Omaha telecast the first TV picture in a five-state area. Only a few citizens had TV receivers on that day, August 29, 1949. Today thousands of Nebraskans watch the Tonight Show starring Nebraska's Johnny Carson.

Recently the television spotlight has been on KUON-TV, Channel 12. KUON is the largest instructional TV distribution and exchange center in the world. It provides educational TV to 106,000 elementary and secondary school students in 210 school districts. The transmitter, located half-way between Lincoln and Omaha, duplicated and distributed more than 6,000 recorded TV lessons in 1966.

One of the first radio stations in Nebraska had a more meager beginning. In the second decade of the Twentieth Century, a man used a crystal set to broadcast from his home in Omaha. He was John O. Yeiser, who organized Omaha's first station in 1921, later to become WOW.

The station changed call letters five times in three years. Finally in 1926, a steamship with the call letters WOW was decommissioned and the call letters reassigned to Omaha. Years later, WOW became one of the first network-affiliated stations west of Chicago when it joined the Red Network of NBC. Now affiliated with CBS, WOW reaches nearly 1/2 million listeners.

WJAG in Norfolk was another pioneer in radio broadcasting. This station was granted a federal license to broadcast just a year after WOW, but its newspaper publishing founder, Gene Huse, was building receiver sets as early as 1912. Today, 72 per cent of WJAG's audience is composed of farmers, ranchers, or people living in small communities.

Agricultural communities in western Nebraska are often dependent on radio, but a different kind of radio. The citizen's band, for amateur radio operators, proved invaluable during the blizzard of 1966. This snowy catastophe left 4 dead, 13 missing, and hundreds stranded in its wake. .

Part of the country around Hyannis was without electric power. Dwain Sutton, a rancher 28 miles south of Ashby, was also without a telephone. He used his radio to call into Alliance. His message, via citizen's band, was then relayed to officials of Panhandle Public Power District who instructed Sutton on how to make repairs on a power substation located close to his ranch. Within hours, power was restored to the stricken area. It would have taken days to clear roads for power service men to reach the substation.

From the earliest telegraph lines set by Creighton to the marvels of today's communication, Nebraskans have pioneered in the telegraph, television, and radio. At the end of its second century, Nebraska will exchange greetings via interplanetary radio with its sons and daughters who are pioneering there.

THEY GAVE OF THEMSELVES

THE AROMA of fresh bread filtered through the dugout as Mrs. Thomas Brabenec knelt in front of the oven to check the browning loaf. She whirled as a shadow suddenly darkened the room. Revealed in the flickering light from the stove was an Indian. Several others were standing behind him.

The Indian extended his hand, but the frightened woman, new to the frontier, brushed it away and mumbled a few words in Bohemian to the unwelcome guests. A shot, partially muffled by the earthen walls, rang out and Mrs. Brabenec slumped to the floor. Outside, young Caroline and Johnny Brabenec were exploring the countryside around their new home. They started to flee, but the Indians held little mercy for white children. Several shots cut them down.

A half mile away, Tom Brabenec, along with two homesteading friends, was cutting cottonwoods to build a log house when they heard the rifle fire. The ways of the frontier were strange to the three Bohemian settlers, and they did not grasp what was happening until they saw the Indians hightailing it toward the hills. The three men, axes in hand, ran to the dugout where they found Mrs. Brabenec lying by the stove, her skirts soaked with blood.

Mrs. Brabenec was still alive, and the three men gently lifted and carried her out of the dugout. While Tom cared for his wife, the others ran to their own dugouts, expecting the worse. Their families were safe, however.

When they returned to the Barbenec home, they found Tom half-running, half-stumbling through the high, thick grass as he called the children. The men joined the search, but their pleading calls were answered only by an occasional song from a meadowlark. Finally, the men gave up the search. As they worked back to the dugout they found Johnny's body with three bullets in the back, lying face down in the deep grass Caroline Brabenec could not be found, and the men decided that she had been abducted by the Indians.

As the next morning's sun inched its way across the sky, its rays fell on a lone grave. Frightened, the three families fled the little green valley that they hope would be home. They had learned that death and tragedy came without warning on the frontier.

Their wagons had not gone far when 30 Ponca Indians approached the now leery travelers. The Indians assured the Bohemians that they would be safe on their claims and that a wandering band of Sioux was responsible for the attack. But the grieving families decided to go on to the claim of a German homesteader near the village of Niobrara. Ten days after the attack, the men returned to their dugouts to pick up food and clothing. That day they found the body of Caroline Brabenec in a plum thicket.

After Mrs. Brabenec's wounds healed, the homesteaders returned to their claims to once again try life on the frontier. There was nothing else the families could do, for they had no money to return East.

The Brabenecs, who came to the state in 1869, were not the first Bohemian settlers to grab their share of free land in Nebraska. Free land, or near free land, was a golden calling card for hundreds of immigrants to pack their belongings and head for the West. the first wave of Czechs were an agricultural people and many were enticed to try farming on the prairie. They were in a strange land with a strange language, so, like many immigrant groups, they tended to band together.

The early immigrants from Bohemia were referred to as Bohemians, but later when Czechoslovakia was established after World War I, the term Czech came into common useage. Both terms are used more or less interchangeably.

Today, Wilber claims to be the Czech capital of the state. But, back in 1865, when Frank Jelink found a piece of land to his liking in Saline County, the prairie represented nothing more than a potential home for his family and friends back in Wisconsin.

When Frank Jelink brought his family West they took a train as far as St. Joseph, Missouri, but the next leg of the journey was more difficult. Their 200-mile jaunt into Nebraska was made by wagon. It was autumn and the roads were muddy. Bad weather added to the misery of the already tiring ride. The Jelinks and their traveling companions had not yet reached their new home when the frontier dealt its first cruel blow. Frank's three-year-old son died on the trail.

Finally, Jelink pulled his wagon to a stop and stepped onto a virgin prairie which would be his home, and the home of the many Czechs to follow. Winter was closing in and the first order of business was to build a home on a treeless plain. Frank had come prepared, and he pulled a spade from the wagon to cut sod bricks for a frontier house.

For the foundation, sod bricks were laid side by side with a gap left for the doorway. The work was hard, but life was seldom easy on the Plains. As the house took shape, cracks in the walls were filled with dirt. The roof was crude, but it did serve its purpose.

With the 12 by 21 house completed, a quilt was hung over the entrance to serve as a door. Eighteen people were packed into that one-room house like sardines. A box, placed in one corner, served as a table. In the opposite corner, four posts were driven into the packed earth floor, saplings were laid across them, and grass placed on the trees for a crude bed. The young bedded on the floor.

Like so many other pioneers, the Saline County settlers found that the ingenious sod house had several disadvantages. The few windows permitted little light and air for ventilation. In December, a blizzard hit and the Czechs soon learned that the sod house offered scant protection from the fine powdery snow that was driven by high winds through every chink. In the mornings, the house was often filled with snow.

To say the lives of the Brabenecs and Jelinks were typical of immigrant life on the Plains would be jumping to a hasty generalization, for life was never typical on the frontier. To pinpoint a reason for their coming is nothing but a guesstimate. But they came, along with other Bohemians, many moving into the Blue River Valley because it reminded them of their native land.

To say the lives of the Brabenecs and Jelinks were typical of immigrant life on the Plains would be jumping to a hasty generalization, for life was never typical on the frontier. To pinpoint a reason for their coming is nothing but a guesstimate. But they came, along with other Bohemians, many moving into the Blue River Valley because it reminded them of their native land.

The Czechs built a part of Nebraska, and today Wilber, Clarkson, Schuyler, and other towns stand as living tribute to those early pioneers. Nebraska may well be the Czech center of the nation, with more than 20 per cent of all the Czech descendants in the United States living here.

While the Czechs were grabbing a firm foothold on Nebraska's prairie, German immigrants were also struggling to make a go of it on the frontier. According to the 1910 census, Nebraska had more than 200,000 German-born settlers.

The Homestead Act was one of the major factors in bringing immigrants to Nebraska, and the Germans were out for their share of the free take. Qualifications for homesteading were relatively simple. Under the law any person who was the head of a family, or was 21 years old, a citizen of the United States, or had filed intention of becoming (Continued on page 93

12,000 TIMES TO THE MILE

HIS NAME was Paddy Cohane, but it could have been Mike Burke or Ian O'Reilly. He bailed from County Cork, but he could have come from Killarney or the cobbles of Dublin town. It really doesn't matter who he was or where he came from. No one ever erected a monument to his deeds or wrote a book about him, and T.V. will never get around to make him a saint in overalls. Paddy was just another Irishman among all the Irishmen who came out to "New Brasky" in 1866 to build a railroad. In fact, Paddy was all the Irish rolled into one and maybe he never even existed but certainly he could have. He never worried about the significance of what was going on around him and he never realized that he was helping to make history. Paddy never aspired to high station and it was never thrust upon him. He was just a man with all the virtues and all the vices, all the dignity, all the arrogance, all the greatness, and all the smallness that are in a man. He lived hard and worked harder and took his pleasures big and his sorrows light. Paddy was born and in due time, he died, and the world did not pause at either event. Still, this man form County Cork was an empire builder who left his mark on Nebraska and the nation—an indelible mark drawn by twin lines of steel across half a continent. Paddy wasn't a pathfinder, he wasn't an engineer

by Fred Nelson

12,000 TIMES TO THE MILE

or a soldier, or a financier. He was a steel-driving man who pounded rails of destiny across an unyielding land to make a big country one.

His hands were too big for the rest of him and his fingers were curved in perpetual claws. Three years of swinging a 10-pound sledge, 12,000 times to the mile, can do that to a man's hands. Paddy's speech was rough and his brogue was rich. He had the fey whimsey of the "Auld Sod" in his eyes and the black melancholy of the Irish in his heart. Like other men, he was kind when he wanted to be and cruel when he had to be.

Someone told him about the big doing in Nebraska. Why, they were paying a man $3 a day to go out there and help build a railroad. The Union Pacific, they called it. A man named Dodge, Grenville M. Dodge, was the head "gazebo". Somebody said he was a general in the Civil War and a friend of Old Abe—God rest his soul. This Dodge was an engineer and he knew how to build a railroad.

And so, Paddy came to Nebraska, to a little collection of houses beside a wide and muddy river. They called it Omaha after a tribe of Indians. Paddy came and 12,000 other men came with him.

Some of these sons of Erin knew horses so they became teamsters. It took an awful lot of horses for a job as big as this when every yard of dirt had to be moved with a slip scraper and every pound of gear had to be hauled from the wharves to the start of track. Other men were broad in the shoulders and thick in the legs so the bosses set them to laying track, but Paddy was tall and limber and as wiry as Old Nick himself so the boss handed him a 10-pound sledge and set him to swinging it, 12,000 times to the mile, spiking rail to tie.

Paddy worked an 85-hour week when things were going good and longer when they didn't, which was most of the time. Once a month, he signed his "X" in a big ledger and got $90 in silver and paper. More often than not, he was broke by next morn's light, for Paddy would gamble and Paddy would drink. And sometimes, because he was lonely and a long ways from home, the girls at end-o-track got more than a wink and a pat from this wild young Irishman.

Broke or not, Paddy really didn't care. The railroad fed him and provided a bed of sorts. At first, it was beef and spuds and a goody or two for sweetening but as the track raced westward and supply lines lengthened, it was more beef than anything else, supplied by herds driven along the right of way.

Spike by spike, Paddy pounded his way from Omaha to Fremont and on to Columbus, and from sunset. Towns sprung up behind him or gew like mushrooms at end-o-track. And if the right of way missed a settlement, well, it wasn't much of a trick to gather up the whole town and move it over. Most of JANUARY, 1967 49   the buildings were jerry-built of slabs which would be knocked down and packed on a flatcar. Re-assembly was easy.

There were days when Paddy traded his sledge for a rifle, for the U.P. was in Indian country and the "hostiles" were on the prod. Instinctively, they saw the menace in this turmoil of men and machines that was rolling across the land. Deep down, the red men knew that the railroad meant loss of the buffalo and the ultimate end of their freedom. And so, they fought it in the only ways they knew. Fire and pillage, massacre and ambush.

Sometimes, Paddy got to the scene of a massacre too late and even his tough Irish soul recoiled at the sights. Corpses multilated beyond any hope of recognition. A burned, charred glob of nothingness that had once been a man, that was once a fair-haired lad, or a dark and sticky huddle of flesh, staining the sandy soil, all that was left of a woman. All these and more too, Paddy saw as the railroad pushed West.

If anybody had told Paddy that every mile of completed track across the prairies meant $16,000 in government subsidy to the backers of the railroad, he would have agreed that it was a sight of money. And if his mentor went on to explain that every mile of track laid down in the big mountains was worth $48,000, Paddy would have wiped the sweat from his face and agreed again indeed this was a sight of money. Still, $3 a day was a sight of money, too, especially when it was your own.

Besides the cash subsidies, the railroad was getting land, lots of land, 6,400 acres per mile in alternate sections contiguous to the right of way. Paddy didn't understand all the financial shenanigans of subsidies, loans, land grants, and all the other money-raising gimmicks that were paying for this railroad but he did know it was costing an awful lot of money to push the steel. A lot of other people didn't understand the financial dealings either, and it took a long time to ferret everything out and get it catalogued. Afterwads there was quite a scandal that involved an outfil called the Credit Mobilier but that was still in the future.

Paddy did know that another company was pushing track from California and that they were in a mighty sweat to get as far east as they possibly could. They scented the big government money, too, and they wanted a grab. Besides, the Mormons in Utah were doing real well and the line that got there first could expect some juicy freight business, since the Saints were more than (Continued on page 88)

"HEAD THEM UP"

A GAMBLE BY Texas cattle barons to recoup fortunes lost during the Civil War blazed the way to Nebraska's development as a leader in the nation's cattle industry and made the Texas Trail a living legend.

Movies and books have perpetuated this legend by glorifying the deeds and misdeeds of the good guys and bad who came jangling up from Texas, lured by the promise of a wild and woolly town named Ogallala, the "sin center of Nebraska".

It wasn't until the Civil War ended that Texas cattlemen turned northward to find markets for their beeves. In some areas of Texas, the longhorns were so plentiful that many a Confederate veteran found himself "cattle poor". Meanwhile, the Yankees may have won the war, but they had lost the cattle battle. Military needs had depleted the northern herds and at the same time, Indian agencies and homesteaders were demanding more and more beef. Prospects of a good market to the north stirred the Texas cattlemen.

By the late 1860's, the Texans were dissatisfied with the treatment they were receiving in Kansas at the end of their long, dusty drives. Efforts to get freight rate concessions from Abilene to Chicago failed, as did efforts toward speedier routes and fewer delays for the shipped cattle.

Irked by these obstacles the cattlemen decided to "head them up and move them out" on their own. A Texas judge, William N. Fant, was authorized to take any steps necessary to improve the cattleman's lot. He had a pretty good idea on where and how to start since his son had driven 650 head to Omaha in 1869 and received a good price for them.

The judge headed for Omaha to discuss the possibility of shipping Texas cattle to eastern points over the Union Pacific Railroad. Omahans quickly saw the immediate benefits to themselves, the U.P., and Nebraska cattle feeders. Union Pacific drew up a tentative rate schedule, while Fant printed and distributed to the Lone Star cattlemen, a circular listing the reasons for driving the longhorns to the new markets.

These advantages, which eventually led to Nebraska becoming the "Beef State", included shorter distances to Chicago than from Abilene, with 25 per 52 NEBRASKAland cent less cost, better pasturage than in Abilene, and higher prices. The cattle would reach Chicago in only three days instead of five with only one change of cars, while three railroad lines from Omaha to Chicago would mean less "traffic" delays.

The Texans, being good businessmen, swooped down or in this case swooped up on the proposed market and headed their cattle north.

The result was the emerging of the first NEBRASKAland cowtowns. Schuyler, not now associated with cows and cowboys, was the point where the first shipment of cattle to Chicago was loaded on July 8, 1870. Between 40,000 and 50,000 Texas cattle were sold at Schuyler that season. It was estimated another 40,000 head could have been sold to Nebraska, Minnesota, and Iowa stockmen.

Cattlemen made their drives to Nebraska City in 1866, to Brownville and Omaha in 1867, to Schuyler from 1870 to 1872, to Kearney in 1871, and to Ogallala from 1875 to 1885.

As farmers moved into eastern Oklahoma and Kansas, they destroyed the famed Chisholm Trail of cowboy songs and tales, forcing the Texas herds westward and thus establishing the Western or Texas Trail to Ogallala. From this point the cattle were shipped eastward or sold to ranchers from a six-state area.

Ogallala rapidly became the chief gateway to the newly-opened ranges of the northwest plains. In 1875, 60,000 to 75,000 head of Texas cattle were driven into Ogallala. In the five-year period, between 1879 and

The discovery of gold in the Black Hills in 1876 and 1877 led to more cattle sales. For the meat-hungry mines with gold in their fists, the sky was the limit for a steak.

Although the end of the drive in Ogallala meant good prices for the Texas owners, the drive meant blizzards, dust, fleas, flood-swollen steams, quicksand, and the worst of all, stampedes. Even buffalo, wandering at night, could start the great herds running and once running it took more than a simple "whoa" to make them stop.

The last leg of the drive was toughest due to lack of water. Western Nebraska had never been known for its over-abundance of water and this period was no exception. Frequently, the drovers would reach one of the smaller streams with their thirsty herd and crew only to find the stream as dry as the rest of the plains. The last day's drive—some 30 to 40 miles from Stinking Water Creek to the South Platte— was the worst of the whole journey for the trail-weary cowhands. But at least, Ogallala, the Cowboys' Paradise, was nearer and nearer with every hoof beat.

Unfortunately for some cowhands, though, they didn't even get the chance to soak in honest-to-goodness hotel baths with hot water or to get some foamy refreshments to wash down the dust at the trail's end. Some trial bosses, who would turn their cowhands loose in Dodge City, put Ogallala off limits to their men because of the town's known lawlessness. Ogallala may have reigned as queen of the cowtowns, but she was no lady, a town too tough even for Texans.

Andy Adams, gave the following description of Nebraska's "Cowboy Capital" in his book, "Log of A Cowboy":

"We finally scaled the last divide, and there, below us in the valley of the South (Continued on page 91)

A PEOPLE'S PRIDE

YOU CAN LOOK at Nebraska's tower capitol in any way you want to —and, for that matter, at any time you want to. It's easy enough to see. It sticks up some 400 feet and is the first thing that pops over the horizon as you approach Lincoln from any direction.

There are some who see the statehouse as one of the architectural marvels of all time. And that's all right; Nebraskans don't mind if other people want to agree with them.

Some see it as a first-class tourist attraction. That's all right, too. Nebraskans don't mind if other folks want to look, too.

And some are pleased that this was the first house of state to depart from the traditional dumpy dome style. And that, too, is something to say about Nebraska's capitol. But there's another way to look at it.

It is also people.

It is three men sweating in a hot attic in July of 1867. It is Lincoln's first resident risking a "ride on a rail" because he wants compensation for his work. It is a handsome auctioneer giving his spiel on a gloomy, rainy day. It is a man named J. T. Beach who drove a wagon through the night. And it is another man named Tom Keller, a desperado of some kind, who helped Beach.

It is three other men fretting, if not sweating, over their work in the governor's mansion in June of 1920. It is, of course, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue who gave his talent and part of his life. It is Lee Lawrie who grieved for Goodhue's help when the architect died before his work was complete. It is an Englishman who renamed a street and made a joke. It is a man named Bryan, not William Jennings, but Charley, who moved in early. And it is a foreman who confounded several engineering experts.

And, of course, it is Ike, and Abe, and WJB, and lots of folks.

So, look not at the building for a moment. But look at these people. The stories about them may be, by now, half-truth and half-legend. A building that stands as a monument to the prairie is bound to breed its own myths and with those myths cloud fact with fiction.

But no Nebraskan will doubt that it was hot in the attic of Captain William Donovan on July 29, 1867. There in the privacy of that room the newly-appointed capital commissioners made a decision. David Butler, first governor, was probably the leader. Thomas P. Kennard, the secretary of state, and John Gillespie, the state auditor, helped with the decision to locate Nebraska's capital city. There is no record as to whether the heat of the attic hastened their deliberations, but when they descended, they told some 40 inhabitants of the village of Lancaster that their little hamlet on Salt Creek would be the capital.

The only point of disagreement among the commissioners had apparently been on the subject of water. One member said that the capital should be located at Ashland where a bountiful supply of pure water was available. He changed his mind, and voted with the majority but the city of Lincoln later exonerated him by piping most of its water from Ashland.

The commissioners believed that the salt deposits near Lincoln would foster a thriving metropolis. The salt deposits were an economic bust, but the commissioners had picked a spot that would one day boast an architectural marvel.

But when you're dealing with people, things aren't quite that easy. There were still Luke Lavender and the handsome auctioneer with whom to deal. Luke's problem was that he darned well did not want to give up the land he had settled in what was to become the city of Lincoln. It worked this way.

In order for the commissioners to have chosen Lincoln, there needed to be 800 acres of state-owned land. The residents of the future capital determined to give the land to the state. Three peopje owned it, Luke and two neighbors. The two neighbors agreed quickly to exchange their land for some beyond the city boundaries, but not Luke. He wanted $1,000 to boot.

And while Luke stood fast, although possibly trembling a bit, the other residents of Lincoln scraped up the $1,000 while they muttered about necktie parties and rides on rails.

The handsome auctioneer had no such personal connection with the future home of the capital, except that it is easy to imagine him standing in the rain trying his best to auction off land to raise money to establish the state government in Lincoln. The auctioneer's problem was that no one was buying. And someone had to buy because to afford to build the capitol in Lincoln, it was now necessary to sell part of the land acquired from Luke and his neighbors.

At the end of the first day—a futile one—the capital commissioners met again, this time in the rain. The commissioners had thought it unethical for them to bid personally on the land. Now, they were convinced that they should bid. And when they agreed, other men from Nebraska City said they would "prime the pump" up to $10,000 worth, when bidding opened the next day.

When the handsome auctioneer started his spiel the next morning, the primed pump poured forth. The land sold and money was available to build a capitol. There were more complications coming, but a start had been made.

The story of Nebraska's first statehouse—there had been territorial capitols in Omaha—was one of people in a hurry. They hurried so rapidly in fact, that the building they built began to come apart within 15 years. But if you're interested in people, even more interesting people were involved in the comic opera played on the route from Omaha to Lincoln when the state's records were moved.

It seems that the people of Omaha were more than a trifle annoyed that the capital was being moved to Lincoln. The records, the state library, and so on, stayed in Omaha for some time after the choice was made in 1867. But, finally it was decided that the records should be moved. It was also decided that the darkness of night would help make this a peaceful transfer. A man named J. T. Beach was picked to drive the wagon.

And drive he did, the story goes. He drove out of Omaha and to the banks of the Platte River. There, while he worried for fear irate Omahans might catch up with him, the men who ran the ferry stalled.

There are a variety of views regarding these ferry operators. There is the charitable viewpoint that they truly were having mechanical difficulties. There is the less charitable viewpoint that they were intentionally trying to slow down Beach.

At any rate, enter the hero. We have little evidence of just what kind of a man was Tom Keller. He has been referred to as a desperado of the day. Of course, there being desperados and desperados, that doesn't tell us much. But on that cold winter morning on the Platte, he behaved as a good hero should.

He pulled his gun and forced the ferryboat operators to start across with Beach and his wagon. But even that was not enough. The ferryboat ran aground on a sandbar and Beach drove his team and wagon the rest of Jthe way across the icy Platte.

There were many people involved in the replacement of Nebraska's first statehouse, but there were many more involved in the replacement of the replacement.

That story started when Nebraska's legislators were willing to give up what many must have considered their right as elected representatives. They decided to allow utter freedom in the choice of the architect and in the design of the state's third capitol.

Architects were confused and bewildered when they were told they must offer a design without even knowing who would judge. The answer was delightful:

"It sets you free to use all the brains you have— not trying to capture the jury by playing up to known preferences of its members—but by designing a building in the same spirit with which any competent craftsman sets out to contrive anything for a purpose. The purpose here is a capitol."

When 10 designs were in, people got back into the act. And that led to the sweating and fretting in the governor's mansion on June 27,1920.

There the judges, Waddy B. Wood of Washington, D.C., chosen by the capitol commissioners, James Bamble Rogers of New York City, chosen by the competing architects, and Willis Polk of San Francisco, chosen by the first two judges, went to work.

Not a hint of what was going on slipped out of the governor's mansion. Through long hours, the jury debated, and finally announced the verdict that Sunday. Its members had chosen (Continued on page 89)

"BLOW OUT" SPELLS RODEO

SELLING RODEO to frontier NEBRASKAland was like peddling iceboxes to Eskimos. But, Nebraska's great showman, William "Buffalo Bill" Cody, did just that. In fact, Buffalo Bill not only sold the West to the West, he also made rodeo the toast of two continents ■ What is most surprising, perhaps, is that Cody's rodeo campaign blossomed without the help of Madison Avenue, national magazines, newspapers, television commercials, or radio jingles ■ Cowpunching was Nebraska's middle name in 1882 when Cody staged his never-to-be-forgotten "Old Glory Blow Out" in North Platte. This forerunner to rodeo emerged from Cody's disapproval that 16-year-old North Platte did not have a celebration planned for the Fourth of July. The town officials promptly appointed grumbling Bill as a one-man committee. That was all he needed ■ Cody nearly worked into an ulcer to make the Blow Out a sky-high success. After persuading the townspeople to offer prizes for shooting, riding, and bronc-busting, Cody sent out 5,000 handbills announcing the gala event. He estimated that about 100 cowboys might enter the rodeo. When it came time to count noses, 1,000 cowboys were on hand ■ Bill rounded up buffalo, longhorn steers, and wild horses. Then, he set out to bribe, cajole, or trick his friends into loaning equipment for the Wild West spectacle. Isaic Dillon, nephew of Union Pacific Railroad President Sidney Dillon, was called upon in particular. Isaic owned trotting horses and had built his own race track. Through Cody's persistence, Dillon offered his half-mile track for the rodeo ■ The Fourth of July dawned bright and clear in North Platte as throngs of people from miles around milled the streets and saloons waiting for the Blow Out to begin. By midday, some 500 whooping, hollering Nebraskans had gathered at the track as the cowboys rounded up the stock ■ Perhaps no one was as jubilant as Cody, however. Riding a fine bay horse, and dressed in his plainsman gear, he loudly welcomed everybody. In fact, according to one account, Bill rode to the nearest saloon between shouts of welcome and came "back jollier every time" Bronc-busting, (Continued on page 89)

FOR EACH HIS OWN...and 37

NEBRASKA CLOSED out its first century of statehood in 1966 with the best crop year in history. After a dry spring, wheat farmers were jubilant when their fields averaged 35 bushels per acre—the highest yield on record. Some growers harvested a fantastic 70 bushels or more.

Corn set a record, too, with an estimated average yield of 73 bushels compared with the previous record of 67 a year earlier. There have been larger total crops but only because fewer acres were planted in 1966 than in some other years. Grain sorghum, soybeans, sugar beets, dry beans, and potatoes also brought good returns to their growers.

Nebraska ranks first in the production of alfalfa meal, wild hay, and Great Northern beans, and second in grain-fed cattle JANUARY, 1967 63   marketed, and in commercial livestock slaughtering. The state is third in wheat and grain sorghum production, grain storage capactiy, total cattle inventories, and in sheep feeding. It is fourth in creamery butter production, fifth in corn production, and sixth in hog production.

Nebraska probably has a more diverse agriculture than any other state. It is the vast Sand Hills' cattle ranch, and the huge Panhandle wheat farm, the traditional family-owned enterprise, and the large corporate organization representing capital from across the nation.

Agriculture is an industry that has given America a production miracle. Today's farmer is the central figure in one of the most amazing success stories of our time. The average productivity per farm worker has more than doubled in the last 20 years. In fact, productivity has gone up more in the last two decades than in all recorded time prior to 1940.

One hour of farm labor today produces four times as much food and fiber as it did 40 years ago. Output per breeding animal is 88 per cent higher. Crop production in the United States is 65 per cent greater per acre. In Nebraska it's up 85 per cent.

Statistics show that today a Nebraska farmer produces enough to feed himself and 37 others. Before World War II he produced only enough to feed himself and 10 others.

This hasn't always been so. Agriculture has changed more than most industries in the last century, and it's due for its share of exciting change in the next hundred years.

One hundred years ago, Nebraska's farmer was a covered-wago settler who knew as much discouragement as hope and as many failures as successes. For every settler who came to Nebraska and stayed, two went back east—convinced that this treeless, arid new state was a frontier too difficult for sensible men. Others pushed farther west.

But some pioneer families found promise in Nebraska's prairies, and they stayed. They grew their own food, made much of their own clothing, and lighted their log cabins or soddies with home-made candles. Fuel came from the wood-lot of from the buffalo chips that littered the range. Most of the people who stayed did not depend entirely on crop production, but had some livestock to tide them over.

The Civil War had just ended when Nebraska became a state in 1867. The Homestead Act had become law only five years earlier. Machines were being built 64 NEBRASKAland to help the farmer plow, plant, and harvest, but he would use horses for power for approximately the next 80 years.

Nebraskans took advantage of the new homestead law, and the state's agricultural development began to gain momentum. The settlers learned that eastern Nebraska was generally adapted to some of the crops they had grown in the East, but that sod-busting could spell trouble in some of the western grass country.

Nearly every Nebraskan whose family has lived in the state for more than a generation knows something about the story of agriculture—because nearly all of them either lived on the farm at one time or have relatives who live there now.

But do we really realize how much our agriculture has changed and how much the farmer has accomplished? Look back for a moment to the '30's, years as tough as anything the pioneers had to face. Those were the depression years, the dust bowl years, the grasshopper years, the days of the kerosene lamp, and the wood and cob-burning stoves.

Can they come again? Perhaps. Certainly drought can come. Insects and plant diseases may always be with us. Temporary recessions and depressions may always be a part of our future. But today's credit sources appear to be more stable, and the Nebraska farmer, with help form the agricultural scientists, is far better prepared to cope with natural disaster than he was some 30 years ago.

Much of Nebraska's farm, and ranch land lies over the most abundant supply of underground water available to any state in the nation, something the early settlers (Continued on page 96)

TOWNS THE RIVER BUILTS

BIG MUDDY, the "boulevard to the West", was an integral factor in the settlement of Nebraska. In the early days, the river's winding course and treacherous pitfalls were both the hope and despair of early settlers. Cantankerous as it was, the Missouri River was still responsible for the opening and development of the Nebraska Territory. It was the thoroughfare which brought pioneers to the West and added to the development of towns and cities in southeast Nebraska. Towns and cities which were to give stature to the nation and produce citizens of national renown.

It is probable that even before the Lewis and Clark explorations, venturing whites, who had progressed up the river as far as St. Joseph, Missouri, came to Nemaha County in search of profit or for love of adventure.

When Lewis and Clark first visited the area in July 1804, their log spoke eloquently of "undulating grass, nearly five feet in height, rich weeds and flowers, interspersed with copses of the osage plum; farther back from the shore were small groves of trees, an abundance of grapes, the wild cherry of the Missouri, resembling that found farther south, but larger, and growing on a small bush, and the choke-cherry."

Such resources led enterprising settlers to stop off as they traveled up the river. Emigrants, impressed by the lush variety of vegetation, saw little advantage in venturing further into the unknown and quickly established settlements which were to be important in early Nebraska history.

Thus, transportation in the form of various craft on the Missouri River played a part in the building of numerous towns along the river's banks. Most of these towns have long since ceased to exist. River transportation spawned these settlements and made one, Brownville, a thriving community. Another form of transportation, the railroad, was almost the death knell for this influential community and nearly brought financial catastrophe to the entire county.

Nebraskans anticipating the completion of Indian Cave State Park in Nemaha and Richardson counties will be impressed with the historical interpretation of St. Deroin. It was the earliest trading post along the river. A half-breed Indian, named Deroin, laid out the town, which is included in the park area, in 1853. One lone building with sagging roof and rotting frames is all that remains of a once-prosperous trading post. The rest of the town has been reclaimed by the wilderness.

Joseph Deroin's trading post was profitable. However, he was a man of repulsive disposition and debtors got little sympathy, which led to the merchant's downfall. An unpaid account by a man named Beddow irritated Deroin, and he declared his intention of collecting the account, or else. Approaching the Beddow home, he was forbidden to enter, but the tyrant crossed the fence and was promptly shot and killed. Beddow was tried and acquitted.

Nemaha County contained the best part of the Halfbreed Reservation, a tract given by the government to offspring of fur traders and Indians by the Treaty of Prairie du Chein in 1830. This tract extended upstream from the mouth of the Big Nemaha River for 10 miles and the same distance upstream from the 66 NEBRASKAland mouth of the Little Nemaha, with a line connecting the two western extremities. The Missouri River was the eastern boundary.

It was shortly after St. Deroin was founded that the Indian title was extinguished. Abstracts of title to land within this area provide interesting reading to this day, in that the earliest records contain names of those half-breeds who were recipients of federal land grants by virtued of that treaty.

A year after the Indian title was extinguished, Richard Brown, a native of Tennessee, crossed the river at a spot where Brownville is now located. The town was named for him.

This city for a time was to become the most populous and influential in the Nebraska Territory. It was the point of embarkation for the overland trip to the gold fields and the far West. It was a boisterous center for mule skinners and bullwhackers who formed wagon trains for transporation of the streamboat passengers coming upriver. For a time it was a center of government, threatening Omaha and Bellevue for recognition as the state capitol. It was also the terminal for Texas cowboys bringing their herds up the dusty trails for consignment to eastern markets. Most important, it was a cultural center where the luxuries and refinements of the East and South were mixed with the rough initiative of settlers, many of whom had spent their last dollar with speculators adn ambitious promoters.

Nemaha City, located some five miles south of Brownville, also came into being as a potential city in 1854. It was looked upon with favor because of its location on a wooded bend in the river, surrounded by JANUARY, 1967   valleys and hills whose fertility promised a great horticultural future. Nemaha City offered a good landing from the river, and yet was high enough to preclude the possibility of flooding.

The Territorial Legislature granted incorporation to the new town in 1855 and also granted a charter to establish a ferry across the Little Nemaha River, as well as a dam for a mill site.

A place of strong abolition tendencies, Nemaha City maintained a station of the Underground Railroad and was a frequent resort for John Brown's men. It was here that a load of Sharps rifles was concealed when the Kansas war ended, late in the fall of 1857. When the Civil War burst upon the nation, Nemaha City responded promptly, with part of Company E and all of Company K of the Second Nebraska Volunteer Infantry, recruited there.

Peru, located on the west bank of the Missouri, some six miles above Brownville, was settled early in 1855, and owed its early existence to contingency of the river. Surveyed in 1857, and registered at the land office in Brownville, Peru had a rival in promoters of the town of Mt. Vernon, located on an adjoining quarter section. The latter, however, failed to attract sustaining business and residents.

Peru's citizens were interested in education, and as early as 1858, a schoolhouse was built by subscription. This interest was the basis for further development in 1863 when the organization of a college was undertaken. The eventual outcome was an offer to the State of Nebraska of property valued at $10,000 for a state normal school. Promptly accepted, the Legislature appropriated $3,000 to finish a building and gave an endowment of 20 sections of saline lands in Lancaster County.

The act to establish Peru State Normal was passed June 21, 1867, and the institution, now known as Peru State Teachers College, is observing its centennial.

Peru also became indebted for railroad development, but was more successful than other towns in the county, for an operating line between it and Nebraska City became an actuality.

Aspinwall was a village on the bank of the Missouri, some 2V2 miles below Nemaha City, and within the Halfbreed Reservation. Most of the land belonged to a single owner, who first built a home there in 1853, but hordes of begging Indians made life unbearable and the family left for a time. The town had been laid out and surveyed earlier, but the survey of record is in 1857, and incorporation was in 1870.

Hillsdale was a settlement on the river, surveyed in 1866, and is located between Aspinwall and St. Deroin. Its chief claim to fame during early Nemaha County history was that it had a post office.

San Francisco was a project of St. Louis promoters who laid it out at an early date between Nemaha City and Aspinwall. It was soon abandoned.

Thus, the river was responsible for at least seven towns, but four of them no longer exist.

Transportation in the form of railroads was the basis for other substantial settlements in Nemaha County, coming after statehood was achieved.

Sheridan was surveyed in 1868, but it was the coming of the Missouri Pacific Railroad in 1882 that provided incentive for a boom in building and manufacturing. Calvert, located less than two miles to the southwest, was born on the Burlington and Missouri Railroad in 1881, and like its near neighbor, grew rapidly.

Agitation to move the county seat from Brownville to Sheridan brought on a series of elections which were unsuccessful until certain obstacles were overcome. Other communities within the county gained votes, but without the advantages of transportation, their backers were faced with ultimate defeat.

Sheridan and Calvert, growing steadily and toward a common location, compromised in 1882 and united under the name of Auburn. This unity was sufficient to overcome opposition and a subsequent election made it the county seat.

Other towns whose existence were based on transportation included Johnson, whose buildings were once moved from a proposed railroad site to one of reality.

Bedford was a railroad town some five miles south of Sheridan. Now known as Howe, the village flourished for a time.

The village known as Febing was about 17 miles west of Brownville in a community of thrifty German people, whose community center was their church.

Brock was a thriving town along the Little Nemaha, some 10 miles above Sheridan. Early settlers found the bottom land unusually fertile and one of the earliest millsites in the county was a successful enterprise. A branch line of the Missouri Pacific Railroad has served to maintain the name of the town, which underwent many changes since settlement in 1855.

Clifton, a settlement some 16 miles west and north of Brownville, was never a village, but had a post office established in 1868. Its chief institution was a circulating library, which expended some $100 each year for new books. Other towns in Nemaha County which were platted but existed for the main part only on paper were Glen Rock, St. Frederick, St. George, Carson, and London.

But the story of transportation in Nemaha County, dependent as it was on the mighty Missouri would not be complete wihtout mention of a proposed railroad of some 540 miles, 10 miles of which were actually constructed with only 4 miles permanently operated.

The Brownville, Fort Kearny and Pacific Railroad was the financial ruin of Brownville and a threat to the fiscal existence of Nemaha County. Regarded by some as a fraud and by others merely as an unfortunate speculation, the struggles surrounding its construction and liquidation found a dreary ending in the United States Supreme Court.

Conceived in 1856, the idea of a railroad from Brownville to the new Fort Kearny and on to the western boundaries of Nebraska Territory was tabled for the duration of the Civil War. In 1867, with statehood, promoters felt that Brownville was the logical connection for a line from Quincy, Illinois thence westward to Fort Kearny.

Enthusiasm ran high, and with the formation of a company, some $100,000 was subscribed in Brownville within three days. Such prominent citizens as Senator Thomas Tipton, Colonel Robert Furnas, and Banker John L. Carson were heavy backers.

Nemaha County Commissioners were petitioned to call a referendum to authorize $300,000 in bonds to finance the railroad, and a Brownville lobby was sent to Washington, D.C., to secure the promised land grant privileges. The vote was close, but approved, since Brownville held the majority of the population. However, opposition was most bitter to a county appropriation of $500 for a commissioner to represent the county at the Washington hearing.

Following a series of disappointing desisions in Congress, and lack of performance by contractors, 68 NEBRASKAland additional life was given the railroad when state lands were offered in return for construction of a specified length of track within a time limit. Again county commissioners agreed to a referendum for a bond issue of $118,000 which residents of Brownville supported for an easy victory. Brownville precinct voted $100,000 and Brownville city authorized $60,000 to the capital stock of the railroad, bringing the total to $278,000 in commitments for which there was no collateral.

Failures and successes were numerous until 1870 when actual ground-breaking ceremonies were held in Brownville. Mule skinners moved dirt, thousands of ties were delivered along the track, and a shanty town constructed near the mouth of Honey Creek, some four miles north of Brownville. From there the rail line was to turn west on the route to Tecumseh, Beatrice, and points west.

But delays in Washington and excuses by directors and consolidations with other companies caused dissatisfaction among local backers, whose eloquent spokesman was the Brownville Advertiser.

Finally, in 1871, the first spike on the iron rails of the Brownville, Fort Kearny and Pacific Railroad was driven in mid-December and some 10 miles of the line was declared ready for operation. Thus, qualification for state lands was declared and title to nearly 20,000 acres passed to promoters. County bonds amounting to $40,000 were tansferred for work completed.

But troubles continued to mount. County commissioners demanded performance before any further funds were to be available. Ready cash, though, in the year 1873 was scarce, and further consolidation and manipulations in controlling personnel brought looming doubts. Another county election failed, even though Brownville residents, still hopeful of consummating their dream, held on and voted in favor.

In mid-1874 it was noted in The Advertiser that the roadbed already constructed was deteriorating, and a disclosure that some ties and rails had been taken up and loaned to another rail line under construction was a shocker. An attampt at consolidation with another rail line brought an litigation for some eight years, and in 1875 the word went out that Brownville, Fort Kearny and Pacific Railroad had ceased to exist.

The final chapters of the county's transportation dream were written in the United States Supreme Court, which reversed a lower court ruling, and while admitting irregularities, stated that an innocent third party had become involved in the shortages and any assets of the railroad must be sold.

The result of that decision in 1883 was described by J. Sterling Morton as follows:

"Taxes in Brownville ran up to 17 cents on the dollar. Brownville property was undesirable. No one demanded it. Its value declined with great velocity. The county seat was removed, mercantile houses and banks deserted the townsite, until some of the best buildings on the main street were roosting places for bats and owls. Grass grew in the streets that had been resonant with the rumble of farm wagons and brisk with the traffic of a rich and prosperous county."

And all the while the old Missouri rolled on, a steadying influence for those residents whose forbearers were more content to work the soil with their hands rather than become involved in less tangible effort.

Today, the "Big Muddy" is coming back into its own...as the "boulevard of the West".

ODE to NEBRASKA

MY ANME is El Viento, "The Wind". I am a globe-trotter, but I have an affinity for Nebraska and the Great Plains, for I have tribed and tested this land and found its people gallant and true. They and their ancestors have fought me and my companions, drought and flood and blizzard for generations and I bow to such courage. Although I am at times harsh, I can also be JANUARY, 1967  

As I skim the countryside, I marvel at the accomplishments the people of this state have brought to pass in a mere 100 years. I cannot help but whistle as I dodge the skyscrapers that probe the clouds. There are giant companies, high-rise apartments, great chain stores, burgeoning industry, and mighty communication towers. Frail television antennas bend with my embrace, and a flag of deep blue with its gold ensign soars in pride at my touch. Though conservative in some things, these people are patriotic and aggressive. They fight valiantly for the things in which they believe.

These are a religious people, with deep and abiding faiths. Small community churches dot the countryside and great cathedrals rise in splendor and beauty in the cities, but I carry the invitation of their bells with equal dispatch. They ring the call to worship, and I wing the song far and wide, through hill and prairie. Perhaps it is this faith that enables Nebraskans to cope with and overcome any challenge nature or fellowman can present.

I know these people, their towns and cities, their farms and factories, their ranches and businesses, their small ponds and giant reservoirs, their tiny streams and mighty rivers. I have explored every crevice in the Pine Ridge and every side street in Omaha. I have seen many changes since the days of the Oregon Trail, and I will see many more.

Already, the industry ranges from dog food to missile parts, from peanut butter to plastics, from kitchen cabinets to cement, from breakfast food to shock absorbers. While agriculture is still No. 1, business is booming. Insurance companies prosper, and so do their clients. The world's largest livestock market continues to combine with cattlemen to keep a firm hold on Nebraska's title, "The Beef State". And, Nebraska retains her claim as the only state where power is totally public-owned.

A new business has come on the scene of late. It is called tourism. Growing by the proverbial "leaps and bounds", the infant industry is luring more and more visitors to this "where the WEST begins" state. Each year, I see more communities JANUARY, 1967 73   awaken to this multi-billion-dollar enterprise. While Nebraska may lack some of the physical attractions of its neighbors, it has an exciting and unparalleled history. Mothers, dads, and kids are attracted to the western lore that Nebraska boasts in such abundance. They come in cars, on planes, on trains, by bus, by boat, and even by roller skates.

Transportation has ever been the key here. I remember the days of the trails, when white-masted prairie schooners with their oxen and horses stretched for endless miles across the then-almost-unsettled Plains. Today, oxen are oddities, and only the working cowboy still rides a horse with any frequency. Freight-carrying barges have replaced the paddle-wheelers on the Missouri. Indians work in factories and wear paint only for their annual powwows. The diesel has ousted the Iron Horse. Hundreds of thousands of automobiles ply super highways. Sturdy steel bridges span the rivers. Gigantic dams hold back flood waters. Mechanized farm machinery does the jobs that once took a dozen men. And great silver jets crisscross the azure blue sky. A trip across the prairie that once took months now takes but just a few hours.

Sometimes I yearn for those days when I moved unhampered through this virgin land. But, even I know that man must progress, and I still have my moments. I may flick dust in his eye as he looks toward the stars, or howl through the night to disturb his slumbers. But I digress. I must be on my way, for this afternoon I have a date with sailboaters at Lake McConaughy.

While I'm there I may have a little fun with the fishermen, and soon I will have a really big day for pheasant season opens. The Game Commission calls this the mixed-bag capital, you know. Much as I hate to, I have to agree with them, for everywhere I go game abounds. And I do not mean football, even if Nebraska is a big gun in the Big Eight.

Ah, yes, I like Nebraska. It is a young land with a young spirit. The people strain and toil, think and study, but they also know laughter and enjoyment. This state has produced greatness in many fields. It has researchers using microscopes and comedians using microphones.

The ideas and endeavors are as broad as the state itself and while Nebraska venerates the relics of the past like the Pony Express Station at Gothenburg, it lives in the Twentieth Century. Sleek jetliners take my breath away as they rise from the runways to cruise at altitudes surpassing 30,000 and 40,000 feet. And, I gasp as the men and ships of the Strategic Air Command scramble in mock alert to board planes faster than the speed of sound. At my best in the Plains, I can only muster speeds from 80 to 100 miles per hour, and my usual efforts range from 5 to 20. As you can see, those SAC boys put me to shame. But this is good, for they stand watch as the "force for peace" on the fronts of the free world.

Whither can I wander that the Space Age has not clasped this once-frontier region? There are few places of retreat. I can still have my way in the reaches of the Badlands, but even here man invades with his curiosity. Perhaps, the Wildcat Hills or the Niobrara. Yet, highways have tamed the treachery of Windlass Hill, and I hear rumors of a dam on the Niobrara. And, these Nebraskans have even nurtured a forest on the prairie.

There seems to be no bounds to the things they will try and accomplish, for they value learning. From Chadron to Peru, colleges and junior colleges inspire and instruct the young minds that will soon provide the guidance of tomorrow. The University of Nebraska at Lincoln continues to grow and expand, sprawling across the heart of the Capital City. I stand in awe at the strides being taken in education. The fantastic new grade and high schools rising across the state are only minor, superficial signs of these times. More important are the methods and ideas being expounded within those walls.

With civilization has come culture and the arts. The drafty opera houses I enjoyed so much are gone, and in their stead stand theaters, museums, art galleries, civic centers, and municipal auditoriums. For the really big events, folks even get decked out in white tie and tails. Now I get only an occasional pass at a silk hat. Sprayed coiffures of the ladies are beyond even my abilities.

Still, concerts and art exhibits are only one facet of life here in 1967. Nebraskans play games like bowling and golf. They swim and dance and hike. They even sit around watching birds. Like everything else, recreational opportunities are as vast as the land and as versatile as its people.

No longer can I create havoc in winter as in the day of the soddy. Snug bungalows, sprawling ranch-styles, solid brick mansions, and comfortable frames bar my entry. Central heat has taken the fun from winter for me, just as air conditioning has put a damper on my summer frolics. Only when man ventures outdoors can I get in my licks, and even then he has his way for now he takes along cozy trailers and pick-up campers.

I continue to be amazed at this land of contrasts. As I speed from border to border, I see many individual personalities of land and people blended to make a whole. From the bluffs of the Missouri to the canyons of the Panhandle, every mile brings new sights, sounds, colors, and geography. There are checkered farms in the East, the rolling Sand Hills, rugged prairies, and craggy hills that hint of the mountains beyond the border.

Farming, too, has evolved. I have watched the tillers of the soil abandon the hand harvest for the threshing machine and the thresher for the combine. I encounter tall corn, wheat, barley, milo, beets, beans, and much more in the new age of diversification. And, on the ranches, I have waved farewell to the scraggly longhorns of the early beef empires, as they have been replaced by purebred stock with long blood lines. Sassy Angus and sleek Herefords munch the grasslands, where once I toyed with the buffalo even before the longhorn. Cattleman and sod-buster have learned to live and profit together, and technology has aided their efforts. Widespread irrigation systems spray me with taps from a gigantic underground water supply, not to mention huge reservoirs.

Still, I am at peace on these new farms and ranches. Despite the modern methods and even more modern homes and bunkhouses, there is a tranquillity that I must envy. Yet, I must admit that even the cities and towns here bespeak a more leisurely approach than elsewhere.

Nebraskans may have traded an evening in front of the fire or around the piano for one in front of the television, but they still know how to get the most from life. They keep informed on the world around them, and newspapers with high-speed pressses, magazines, television, and radio all contribute to their knowledge.

Maybe I'm blowing a bit hard. Nebraska is not Utopia. It has no two-mile-high mountains nor a salty seacoast, but thyose are the only things I can think of that it really doesn't have.

As you may have surmised, I, El Viento, am in love with this strange and unique land and its people. I will broadcast their feats and carry the news of their accomplishments. They have come a long way, and they have a long way to go. But, they face the future with a confidence I find lacking in many other places and peoples. Nebraskans know the meaning of struggle, for they have carved an empire where once was only wilderness.

I, The Wind, will testify to their strength, their courage, their will

Meanwhile, I will turn the out
moded windmills and whistle in the dark. I will watch the children grow
 into handsome and hardy men and
 women. I will see even more changes
 in this, my favorite land, as Ne
braska enters her second century of statehood. Politicians will come and
 go. Generations will follow generations. But, I will keep the diary
 and the ledgers up to date. This is
 NEBRASKAland today. Who knows
 what the morrow will bring? Not even I, El Viento, can foretell the
 future. Only this do I know. In
 Nebraska, the future is limited only
 as man is limited. This, the gateway
 to the golden West, looks ever for
ward, and the road is full of
 promise.

HUNTING IN A HURRYING WORLD

NEBRASKA'S WILDLIFE of today is not a mirror reflection of its past, for its picture has changed to keep pace with the advances of a hurrying world. It is natural for sportsmen to long for the "good old days" of unlimited hunting and abundant game, but the only element left of such past experiences is mellow meditation.

Rather than chasing ghosts of the days gone by, let's take a look at the game birds and animals of today. How well have our wildlife populations fared under the press of civilization? What about native species and the exotics? How good is our hunting today and how good will it be tomorrow?

Some of the Nebraska's native game like the buffalo are gone, victims of an on-rushing civilization. Others, such as the prairie grouse, have had their ranges curtailed and their numbers lessened, but they are still around. On the other hand, some of Nebraska's native wildlife, like the quail and the deer, are in better shape now than they were a century ago.

With the exception of the pheasant, Nebraska's success with exotics has not been outstanding, but the ringneck has more than made up for the failures. All in all, present-day hunting in Nebraska is good to excellent, with a wide variety of game birds and animals available to the sportsmen. The future appears bright unless there are drastic changes in land use or an unlooked-for population explosion.

After the controversial rape of our wildlife resources in the late 1800's, wildlife enthusiasts who had foresight initiated the preservation and management agency that is now the Nebraska Game, Forestation and Parks Commission. Through the efforts of this state agency and many dedicated laymen in the field, Nebraska's wildlife on the whole has fared very well.

The classic example of a successful introduction of a nonnative bird is the ring-necked pheasant. No one knows for sure when this magnificent game bird was first introduced here, for the old records are incomplete and clouded by uncertainty. At the turn of JANUARY, 1967 81   the century, one of the more popular hobbies of the "White Collar Class" was the raising and keeping of poultry.

Eventually, these fanciers secured pheasants to grace their pens. These birds had been the pride and joy of European fanciers for years, so it was inevitable that some pheasants found their way to aviaries in Nebraska. Once in the state, a few birds probably escaped, while others were released. The first recorded observation of pheasants was reported from Pawnee County, near the town of Du Bois in 1904. In 1915, the Bureau of Game of the State Department of Agriculture contracted with the Lincoln Park Department to raise pheasants for release.

That this imported game bird liked his new home soon became evident with the growing populations of released birds. By 1927, pheasants were numerous in Sherman, Greeley, Howard, and Valley counties. The Bureau of Game offered farmers in these areas $1 per pheasant for trapping and delivering live birds to further the stocking program in other parts of the state. This plan was so successful that the next year the price was reduced to 50 cents per bird. In 1928, Nebraska hunters enjoyed their first pheasant season in Wheeler and part of Sherman counties. This initial season ran for three days with daily bag limits of five cocks and a possession limit of five.

By 1930, a 10-day season was opened in 23 counties. The next year, the season was opened in 76 counties, then expanded to 78 counties in 1934. From these scanty beginnings, Nebraska's pheasant population grew until by the early 1940's the birds were numbered in the millions. Since then, pheasant numbers have fluctuated due to weather conditions, land-use practices, and other factors. Despite these variations, the pheasant is Nebraska's most abundant game bird.

With the ringneck established in all available habitat there is no further need to stock. When nesting and cover condition are favorable, the population rises, when they are not, the population declines.

The regulated gun is not the deterrent factor in reducing any wildlife population. Under the present management practices, the hunter does not even take the annual surplus of pheasants. Likewise, quail, prairie grouse, and ducks are not harvested to a point that endangers future populations.

Nebraska's pheasant story reveals many aspects
 of modern man's regard for wildlife. Native birds like
 the quail and prairie grouse found much of their habi
tat destroyed with the coming of civilization and its
 plow. The deer, antelope, elk, wolf, bear, and mountain
 lion felt the press of man's westward migration and
 each species had to adapt to the changing conditions or be extirpated. Many birds found their nesting habitat destroyed while animals like the bear, wolf, and
 mountain lion were either driven farther west or exterminated by the settlers.

Many of the other birds and animals were better able to acclimate themselves to agriculture and rural development. Quail populations definitely improved with the coming of agriculture. Once the plow broke the native sod, it enhanced weed growth as well as that of grain to furnish the bobwhite with better food and cover than he had in his original environment. Today, this top game bird is abundant in eastern and southern Nebraska. Cover and weather conditions affect the population. In good years, quail expand their range milo fringe areas.

Prairie grouse were less fortunate than quail. However, prairie chickens initially increased with the coming of agriculture and then declined as more and more land was plowed, with the subsequent loss of native grasses, necessary for nesting and brood rearing.

As we look at our current prairie grouse populations we can see it was the changing environment that pushed the birds into their present habitat in the Sand Hills. These birds could not adapt to cultivated lands, so they inhabit the remaining grasslands.

The outlook for the grouse is bright. With the improved-range-management practices of the ranchers, the huge grasslands of the Sand Hills will continue to produce its annual crop of "chickens".

Nebraskans have always been interested in the wild turkey, which was native to the state along the Missouri, Platte, and Republican watersheds. Today, there are probably more birds in the state than there were when the pioneer came. These turkeys are not of the same strain as the old-timers. Native birds were the Eastern or Virginia turkey. The Merriam's, or Western turkey, has adapted to the Ponderosa-and-cedar-forested areas of Nebraska with unprecedented success.

Earlier attempts at re-introducing turkeys of the eastern strain can be traced back to the 1930's. Other attempts continued into the 1950's but without success. This birds were domestic or semi-domestic game farm stock that were not able to cope with life in the wild. In 1959, the dream of game technicians finally came true when the Game Commission secured 28 wild birds from Wyoming and South Dakota. This nucleous of our present turkey population was released in the Pine Ridge area. One release was made along Deadman's Creek in Dawes County and another along Cottonwood Creek in Sioux County.

Offspring of these birds were trapped and released on other suitable sites along the Niobrara River drainage and in the Wildcat Hills. Other types of habitat 82 NEBRASKAland looked suitable for still another strain of turkey, the Rio Grande of the Southwest. Supposedly this bird is more suited to the more open broad-leaf tree cover along the stream bottoms. Imported from Texas, the turkeys were released in southwest and south-central Nebraska. They have shown some promise, but their future successremains uncertain.

How many wild turkeys inhabit Nebraska now? Game biologists find it impossible to give an accurate account but estimate the population at more than 5,000. Nebraska is now one of the 15 top wild-turkey states in the nation.

Not all attempts to introduce or reintroduce game birds and animals were successful. Both Game Commission and private releases of such birds as the European gray partridge, (the Hungarian partridge), scaled quail, Coturnix quail, and the Chukar partridge were failures. For the past three years the Game Commission has been trying a different strain of chukar, this one a native of Turkey. At present, the future of this bird is still in doubt, but it shows some promise. During the past summer, reproduction has been observed in the Lewellen and Oshkosh areas. Whether or not this exotic will become established in Nebraska is now up to nature.

Adaptation of native animals to the changing environment is common knowledge to Nebraskans. The cottontail rabbit is found in large numbers throughout the state and has found metropolitan living much to his liking. He has adapted so well that he is sometimes considered a nuisance to fruit growers and gardners.

The fox and the coyote live within the shadow of even the largest cities as does the white-tailed deer. Nebraska's deer story is another saga in landowner and game management co-operation.

Deer took the better part of a half century to return. Their comeback is a unique story of public awareness and concern, landowner co-operation, and good game management. The first deer season since 1907 was held in Halsey Forest in 1945 when 500 permits were issued. A total of 361 deer were harvested by hunters. This first season created some controversy among the ultra-conservatives who couldn't believe that deer were once again numerous enough to hunt.

Deer, however, continued to re-populate practically all of their original habitat and have spread into areas that certainly couldn't have held many a century ago. The animals took readily to the tree claims and shelterbelts planted by many landowners. They found that agriculture offered a food supply as good, if not better than their original sources.

Of the two species of deer in Nebraska, the whitetail is gaining more rapidly than the mule deer. Most of this increase is due to the early breeding habit and earlier twin production. In addition, the whitetail is the more elusive of the two species by nature. His preference for heavy cover and his inborn distrust of man foster his survival and increase.

The adaptability of this big-game animal to civilization is remarkable. Man has given him protection and a new environment. One on which he has thrived. It is not uncommon to see the white-tailed deer on the fringes of our large cities, or making his bed in a shelterbelt, scant yards from a farmhouse. He has evolved to where he is perhaps a better animal than he was 100 years ago.

Today, Nebraska's deer herd is still growing, especially in the eastern part of Nebraska where there is some cover still to be utilized. Now, deer have reached a point where the annual surplus is taken with 65 to 70 percent of the kills falling within the yearling-age class.

Nebraska's deer capture the admiration of many who see them in the wild. Down through the years these animals have become symbolic of the wildlife community. In the eyes of the young and the feminine they are creatures of grace and beauty. To the out-doorsmen and hunter they are elusive will-o-the-wisps. A magnificient buck is the ultimate in hunting for many sportsmen.

The pronghorn, another of our native animals, has been unable to cope with man and agriculture. The Game Commission has restocked some animals in the Sand Hills with limited success, but the best herds are in Panhandle counties. His future appears to be one of a somewhat static population due to the available range.

The bulk of his diet is native shrubs and weeds. Grainfields of the west hold little appeal to him. Fencing is also making inroads on the population by limiting the movements of the herds. An antelope as he is popularly known, rarely jumps a fence like a deer, he consistently goes under the wire rather than over. A three-strand barbed-wire fence has enough room for him to slip under but when he faces a five-strand fence where the bottom wire may be less than a foot off the ground, he is stymied. Woven-wire fences, used for hogs and sheep, are practically impassable.

Man in his modern civilization has not bypassed
 his wild resources. He has nutured the brood stock,
 introduced exotic species, and is aware of the need to
 preserve environments for both himself and Nebraska's
 wildlife. He has succeeded well in the past century, but the next hundred years may pose undreamed-of
 problems and challenges. Like the early conservation
ists who passed their zeal and enthusiasm on to us, we
 must pass our accomplishments on to future genera
tions, and hope they can add to them.

THE GOOD "NEW DAYS"

A LONGING FOR the old days when life was supposedly slower and simpler is inherent in most of us, unless we are Nebraska fishermen. The angling clan wants no part of a century ago when Nebraska first became a state. You see, back then there wasn't any Lake McConaughy. In fact, there wasn't any Lake McConaughy until 1942. But this huge impoundment has more than made up for its tardiness with outstanding fishing for the past 25 years.

This 35,000-acre reservoir with its miles of sand beaches and long stretches of rocky shoreline has furnished anglers with more fishing pleasure and asthetics than possibly any other lake in the central states. Its cool, clear waters offer a varied fish population that is both abundant and sizable.

Soon after construction, Lake McConaughy was a hot spot for crappie, largemouth, and bluegill. As the environment changed, these species declined in nubers but the slack was more than taken up with the introduction of white bass, walleye, rainbow trout, and smallmouth. Today, these are the Big Four in McConaughy but channel catfish, yellow perch, and northern pike are close seconds.

As the years passed, fishermen learned more and more about Lake McConaughy and its secrets. At first, most fishing was from shore, but now most of the ardent anglers use boats to find the action. Fishing for white bass during their spawning runs in late April and early May borders on the fantastic around the mouths of Otter and Lonergin creeks. In June and early July, the silversides are found along the dame. In late summer, anglers let the gulls lead them to the upper portion of the reservoir where the white bass congregate. Walleye are another king-size attraction at McConaughy. Anglers find them along the dam in April and early May.

The dam was about 19 years old when rod wielders found that trolling for rainbow trout during the summer months could produce catches to remember. Early-bird anglers claim the March fishing for channel cats in the upper end of the impoundment is very good.

Walleye, white bass, and rainbow trout were not even on the scene when Nebraska became a state. They are introduced species, having come to Nebraska thorugh stocking efforts. Back in 1867, the only fish found here were those native to the Missouri River and its tributaries. These included catfish, perch, suckers, gar, sturgeon, buffalo, redhorse, and a batch of different minnows. Bass came here by accident. A train carrying 300,000 live fish from the East Coast was derailed on a bridge, east of Fremont. Among the dumped Elkhorn River to their liking. In 1881, the superintendent of the Gretna Fish Hatchery reported that bass were plentiful in the entire river. He believed they came from the train wreck.

Salmon was the first fish to be deliberately stocked in Nebraska. The old United States Fish Commission

[image]

Spring white bass fishing borders on fantastic at Big Mac

84 NEBRASKAland

[image]

The creation of vast, new lakes has boosted Nebraska's surface water to 149,000 acres

JANUARY, 1967 85   stocked Atlantic salmon in the Missouri River at Omaha. These cold-water scrappers didn't cotton to the Mighty Mo and gave up the ghost real quick. Another salmon was the second visitor to Nebraska. In 1880, the newly-formed Nebraska Fish Commission stocked the chinook in Salt Creek, Big Blue River, and other streams. The chinook didn't like this country and he faded away.

And so it went as Nebraska built up its fishery through the years. Some of the introductions were miserable and costly failures. Others were successful and one too much so. The carp, a European, came here in 1881. He liked Nebraska. In fact, he liked it so well that he became a nuisance.

In the old days, everybody and their dog seemed to be hepped up about trout. Numerous stockings were made, often in waters that could not support these somewhat finicky fish. Gradually, technicians learned more and more about trout and began matching their needs to the available waters. Nebraska has some fair to good trout fishing today, thanks to these early efforts.

Also, Nebraska fish pioneers were learning something else. They began to work with the native species and sought to improve their distribution by taking them from here and putting them there. Catfish and other natives were splashed into new waters to bring fishermen and fish closer together.

Fishing in the old days was not always as fabulous as people are led to believe, but there were some sizable fish taken. The Nebraska Advertiser of Brownville tells of a 120-pound catfish caught from the Missouri River in 1857. Another catfish weighing 165 pounds was caught at the mouth of Papillion Creek.

The Central Union Agriculturist of Omaha stated in 1879 that the Blue River was furnishing Sewardites with plenty of pike, bass, and catfish.

This same newspaper told of another fishing experience. It states:

"The bulkhead of the mill-race at West Point on the Elkhorn River went out last week. About 500 pounds offish, principally catfish, were captured, some weighing as high as 70 pounds. One huge catfish carried a full-grown man on his back into the river and then threw him off. The man was unable to swim, and it was with great difficulty that the bystanders succeeded in fishing the man out."

It is difficult to compare fish sizes of yesterday with the average weight and length of today's prize catches, since fish have a way of getting bigger and bigger with the passing years. However, there are some aspects of fishing that are far better now than they ever were in 1867. For one thing, there are a lot more water areas available to anglers. Also, there are lot more species waiting to grab a lure.

There were no laws protecting fish 100 years ago, as a scarcity of people made regulations unnecessary. Now, with large numbers fishing Nebraska's waters, it is necessary to set regulations for protection of certain species and provide for future generations.

Scientific fisheries management here is relatively new. It began in 1954, when five districts were formed in the state, with a trained fisheries techician in each district. Seventy people are now working full-time to manage and improve Nebraska's fishing. Approximately one-third of the personnel are trained fishery biologists.

Under the present fish-management program in Nebraska, hatchery production is geared to certain sizes and species of fish, which in the light of present 86 NEBRASKAland knowledge can provide more angling sport for Nebraskans.

Physical characteristics of Nebraska's waters have changed drastically in the past century. In 1867, fishing water consisted mainly of streams. Some of the natural Sand Hills' lakes also contained fish. It is believed that these fish found their way into some of the lakes during periods of high water.

Away back when pollution was practically an unknown word, the streams ran cool and clear and were suitable for bass, walleye, sauger, and other game species. A history of Gage County, published in 1918, has this to say about the Big Blue River in the early days:

"The Big Blue River was the one reliable source of fish supply. In this respect it was very notable as fish abounded in it and were easily taken, and before the wash from the cultivated lands had changed their characteristics, its waters were clear, sparkling, beautiful as a mountain stream, in deep places, as blue as the overhanging sky."

As the state became more populated, the streams began to change because of agricultural, and industrial operations. Sewage, and other pollution from the towns and cities being built along the streams, got in their deadly work. But, there is increasing hope for the future as better pollution controls are being worked out. Beginning in the early 1940's, and continuing to the present time, construction of irrigation and power reservoirs has harnessed and slowed many of Nebraska's major streams. In the last decade, watershed lakes and farm ponds have also increased enormously.

Today in Nebraska, there are 72,000 acres of reservoirs, hundreds of natural lakes, and many thousands of farm ponds. A recent survey shows that Nebraska now has approximately 149,000 surface acres of standing water in reservoirs, lakes, and ponds that are fishing waters.

Although power and irrigation reservoirs are not ideal fish lakes, they have provided badly needed additional fishing areas for Nebraska.

The fisheries division's objective is to provide the maximum number of successful fishing trips to the maximum number of anglers. Attempting to fulfill this objective involves many areas of activity including regulations, habitat improvement, production and stocking of fish, population manipulation, creation of new fishing waters, investigations, research, and education.

With trained fisheries personnel teaming up with the many thousands of acres of new waters now under
 construction or on the drawing boards by federal and
 state agencies, Nebraska's fishing future in the next 100 years looks bright indeed. All in all, the state has
 come a long way from that day when the Elkhorn River
 was stocked by a train wreck.

12,000 TIMES TO THE MILE

anxious to ship their products. The U.P. was just as determined, so a mighty rivalry developed between the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. A rivalry that caught the imagination of the whole country.

Even the dullest of gandy dancers was soon aware of this bitter competition between the two railroads. Paddy was certainly aware of it. When he first signed on, a mile of track a day was considered an accomplishment. Now, the frantic pace was stepping up. Two miles a day, then three, then four, make it five, try for six, drive for seven, and hope for ten. Somehow, Paddy and the boys met the challenge. They never got to ten but they came mighty close to it.

Of course, a lot of men died in the doing. When you're flat out on a dangerous job accidents are going to happen. Nobody knows how many men were killed in that last great frenzy of building, but there were plenty of widows around when it was over.

A railroad has a lot of ways of killing a man and Paddy became familiar with them all. A work locomotiuve could run a man down and grind him into shreds, flatcars could go maverick and run wild to crush a man, a carload of rails could slide and pound the careless into pulp. A horse could kick, a river could drown, quicksand could trap, and sometimes, when the Irish whiskey was a bit too plentiful, a swinging pick handle or a flashing axe could settle an argument, pretty permanently.

Still, the work went on and on for the whole country was impatient to see this railroad finished. It was now a matter of national pride and America was in the mood to move. There just couldn't be any holiday for death when there was so much at stake.

Then one day in May 1869 it was all over. Way out at Promontory, Utah the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific met and there was no more end-o-track. They had a lot of speeching and celebrating that day as the top brass of both lines met to do the honors. Why, they even drove a golden spike in a polished laurel tie to mark the final linkup. The big wigs pounded some other spikes into that final tie, too. A silver one, and one that was a mixture of both gold and silver, but that solid gold spike was the one that wrote finis to this great undertaking. Of course, they took up the tie and all the spikes a little later on and stored them away. A solid gold spike was worth money and when a man has a bit of a thirst, he just might steal from history to satisfy it.

Paddy and the boys were a little put out, anyway. Two locomotives, one from the east and one form the west, inched toward each other to break a bottle of champagne betwen them and officially mark the completion of the transcontinental railroad. Waste of good drinking stuff, Paddy figured. Especially, since he hadn't a chance to really hang one on since he left North Platte.

How long did it take to push the U.P., through Nebraska? Well, they really didn't get going from Omaha until early in 1866 but by November of that year, the end-0-track was 12 miles west of North Platte for a railroad distance of 305 miles. Early the next spring, the rails were beyond the western border of Nebraska, so give or take a few weeks, it was only a year. It was mighty good railroading but nothing compared to the frantic pace of 1868 and '69. Paddy and his mates laid 555 miles of main line and 180 miles of sidings in that last great surge.

What did the whole shebang cost? Well, the Union Pacific spent $90 million and the Central Pacific, $75 million, and that's a lot of money any way you slice it.

And what about Paddy adn his $90 a month? Well, when Paddy was breaking his bakc for the U.P. in Nebraska, he sized up a pretty piece of land along the Platte River. So, he got to thinking about it, now that his railroading was done. It looked like a good place to settle down, marry, raise kids, and maybe farm.

All he had to do was file on 160 acres and prove it up in five years, then it would be his, free and clear. After building 1,085 miles of track in a shade over 3 years, a man shouldn't have to sweat to tame 160 acres in 5.

A PEOPLE'S PRIDE

a man and a design. He was Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue of New York. His design, a tower above the plains.

We know that Goodhue was human and that he was a perfectionist. He also must have had patience, for he agreed to build the statehouse around the existing structure so that state government could go on without interruption. And during the 10 years that it took to build the capitol, on a typically Nebraskan pay-as-you-go basis, the old building was gradually razed and the new one raised.

Goodhue must have also been an angry man at times. And so must those for whom he worked. Any person who has built a house is acquainted with the normal squabbles between the contractor and the client. Thus it was for Goodhue and the legislators at times. It wasn't that the lawmakers tampered with the design; they asked questions about the costs and the specifications. But these things passed.

And so, too, unfortunately did Goodhue. He died in 1924. But his design by then was well established and his work could be completed by others. But another man, the sculptor of the 26-foot statue of the Sower, grieved.

That sculptor, Lee Lawrie, wrote: "He told me only recently that the work and the people at Lincoln were a real joy to him. I am the only one who really needs his help, for while my part is sculpture, it is his architecture in plastic form.

Ah, yes, Lee Lawrie's 26-foot statue. And therein is another story of people. It may be legend, but it is too good to pass up.

The story goes that the architects and engineers for the statehouse held a meeting to discuss the exact procedures necessary to raise the 8V2-ton Sower to his perch, 400 feet in the air. At the same time, according to the story, the construction foreman in Lincoln completed one job and looked to the next. The next job, he reasoned, was to hoist the Sower with the help of the 5,000 feet of cable that had been rigged for the job. And so, when the architects and engineers returned from their meeting, there was the Sower, set carefully on his side at the top of the new tower capitol.

Of course, there were other people as it went along—not important to the capitol itself, perhaps-but people who added flavor to an architectural decide. One was a cockney Englishman who thought the specially-constructed railroad to haul heavy construction materials to the site should have a name. Since the railroad ran along H Street, he named it 'The Haitch Street and Capitol Railroad." Some were glad that L Street was not involved.

And then there was the man who moved in early. He was Charley Bryan, the brother of the famous William Jennings Bryan. But Charley, unlike WJB, was quite successful at the polls, at least in Nebraska. He was several times governor of the state and mayor of Lincoln. When it appeared that the capitol would not be complete before the Charley Bryan's term ended, he alleged to have moved into the governor's suite and held an open house anyhow. Actually, Bryan succeeded in being re-elected to make the dedication.

So, Nebraska's tower capitol was built by people. And although the structure was complete, people continued to build the legends and the personality around it. There was, for example, the case of the temporary statue. And the case of the square bull and later the case of the blizzard mural.

The bull and the blizzard, of course, were among the murals paced in the capitol's Great Hall. The artists exercised their prerogatives and the people exercised their criticisms. The result— a furor over a bull that was square and a storm over a blizzard that was abstract.

The story of the temporary statue is perhaps best told in reverse. It could start in 1952 when General Dwight Eisenhower was headed eastward for the Republican convention. He was, as everyone knew, in the running for presidental nomination. He was to speak from a stand on the north steps of the capitol.

The complete facts behind that speech are not known, but the stories must be at least preserved for amusement. It has been reported that Ike's advisers in Denver were warned by advisers in Lincoln that the general would be speaking near the statue of William Jennings Bryan, a fairly well known Democrat, not near the statue of Abraham Lincoln, a very well known Republican. Nonetheless, the story goes, the advice was apparently ignored. And when Ike spoke, making references to Abraham Lincoln, some who observed saw him motion to the statue of Bryan; not around the corner to the statue of Lincoln on the west side.

Yes, even the people became involved in the placement of statues around the capitol. Lincoln had his place at the west entrance. When money was raised for a statue of Bryan, its sponsors wanted the Great Commoner on the north entrance. Those who opposed it wanted him on the east entrance. The battle with all of its political overtones raged for weeks until it was finally agreed that the huge statue of the Boy Orator of the Platte could be placed "temporarily" on the north side. And his sponsors, it is said, did just that -place it "temporarily" in concrete.

It is possible-even probable-that one day more people with more statues will want to place them around the statehouse. There are, after all, two entrances as yet unadorned. And there is no way of knowing of whom those statues may be. But, would you consider:

Three men sweating in a hot attic, or Lincoln's first resident risking a ride on a rail or a handsome auctioneer spieling in the rain, or J. T. Beach driving a wagon, or Tom Keller pulling his gun?

No these men will never be immortalized in statuary. And that's all right. Thev have become a part of the legend around Nebraska's capitol.

"BLOW OUT" SPELLS

bull riding, steer roping, and wild-horse racing cut loose with a frenzy. Amid cheers, gasps, and applause, back-busting action erupted.

Part way through the rip-snorting performance, a pint-size cowboy with mussed hair and dirt-stained face took after a big buffalo. The cowpoke roped the lurching animal all right, but his skittish horse stopped too quickly. When the charging bull hit the end of the rope, he broke it like a thread. As spectators made a mad scramble for the fence, the hard-riding cowboy let out an ear-splitting war cry and spurred his horse up to the stomping buffalo. Then, he leaned over, got both hands full of buffalo mane, and slid onto the great animal's back. A roar of glee went up from the crowd. Suddenly, another cowboy, grinning from ear to ear, dashed out and hoisted himself up on the animal. Enraged, the buffalo practically bucked himself out of his hide.

Always the businessman, Cody was not blind to the back-slapping raves the rodeo brought. He wondered about the commercial possibilities of a "Wild West Show" fashioned after the Blow Out.

By spring of the next year, Cody was ready to go with the show. But, because he insisted upon authenticity in every detail, disaster almost struck the company's first rehearsal at Colville (now Columbus), Nebraska. The colorful congregation consisted of scouts, cowboys, Mexican vaqueros, Indians, buffalo, elk, mountain sheep, bucking horses, a stagecoach, and wagons.

The stagecoach, hitched to a team of almost unbroken mules, had Mayor "Pap" Clothier and members of the town council as passengers and honored guests. Frank North, a respected soldier, led the Pawnees who were to fake an attack upon the stagecoach. However, when the Pawnees shrieked and charged, firing blank cartridges, the mules gave one snort and bolted. Undaunted, the Indians took up the chase with vigor. Soon, the whole company was swept along with the stampede. Around and around raced the "show" until the mules finally tired. Some say that the mayor had to be restrained from giving Cody a good thrashing. That would have made quite an encore, for Bill could take care of himself.

But, in spite of preliminary difficulties, the Wild West Show thrived. From Omaha to Madison Square Garden in New York City, the combination showrodeo stole the spotlight. Easterners and Westerners alike were as delighted with the extravaganza as kids with peppermint candy.

Bill's fame spread far and wide. His rough-and-tumble troupe invaded England during Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887. They took the country by storm, and Cody became London's social lion.

Victoria commanded two performances. At one of them, Kings of Belgium, Denmark, Saxony, and Greece plus the JANUARY, 1967 89   Prince of Wales rode in the Deadwood Stage as Indians whooped, hollered, fired guns, and chased it around the arena. The crowned heads loved every minute of it.

After adding England's scalp to his belt, Bill toured Europe and became a smashing success. He never held the same show twice, although some of his regular acts included sharp-shooter Annie Oakley, the Deadwood Stage, and the Battle of Summit Springs.

Fame and fortune did not keep Bill away from North Platte, however. He wintered his show at his favorite retreat, Scout's Rest Ranch.

Cody's Old Glory Blow Out on July 4, 1882, still echoes across the nation today. Probably more rodeos are held over the Fourth of July than at any other time in the year. Some 15 states now host blowouts on Independence Day. Rodeo has grown by bucks and bounces since Cody blew the top off North Platte with his Blow Out. From big three-day affairs to small "punkin rollers", rodeo is staged indoors and outdoors in NEBRASKAland and across the country. The circuit begins in Texas early in the spring and fans across the nation. Madison Square Garden in New York City and the Cow Palace in San Francisco are "really big shows" that more or less wind up the season.

Burwell, North Platte, Ogallala, O'Neill, Sidney, Broken Bow, Crawford, Wahoo, and Omaha head a long list of modern-day Blow Outs in Nebraska.

The frontier is not just a romanitic term in NEBRASKAland. With such living remnants of Buffalo Bill's Blow Out as rodeo, stock shows, and other western entertainment, it's a sure bet that Nebraskans will long remember the old gentleman who preserve the wild and woolly west for generations to come.

PLAIN JIM

then a handsome lawyer from Lincoln, who was in Chadron on a business trip. The day Bryan arrived in Chadron, Democrats were planning a political rally in nearby Gordon. Bryan asked to go along. Arriving in Gordon, they found the local Democrats in despair as their "spell-binder" speaker had failed to show his face. Bryan offered his oratorical aid.

All were skeptical, including his newfound friend, Dahlman, who later added, "He hadn't spoken five minutes before I knew he could talk. We had never heard such oratory before in all northwestern Nebraska."

During the years in which Bryan was fighting his political battles in Nebraska and the nation, he had no more loyal friend than Dahlman.

With his political appetite whetted, Jim began dipping his fingers into the state political pot. First as a delegate to the Democratic State Convention in 1892 and then on to the national convention in Chicago the same year. He was re-elected sheriff of Dawes County twice again and then retired, only to be elected mayor. As years passed, Dahlman found himself drawn more and more into state politics. His first actual participation in state politics was in 1894 as a Dawes County delegate to the Democratic State Convention. At the convention, Bryan was nominated for U.S. Senator and the Mayor eagerly embraced the opportunity to cast his vote for the magnetic young Nebraskan, who later went down to defeat.

Dahlman at that time could see little money in politics and had no desire to seek a state office. An old Texas buddy, F. W. "Billy" Flato, wanted to extend his livestock commission business from Kansas City to Omaha, so they joined forces. Active as he was in the livestock business, Dahlman didn't completely forget politics but after another Bryan defeat, he did settle down to the life of a South Omaha livestock man.

But not for long. In 1904, he did a daring thing for a staunch Democrat. He rode m the inaugural parade of Theodore Roosevelt. He didn't ride in the parade as a Democrat; he rode as a cowboy doing honor to the only cowpuncher who ever became president. Eastern newspapers were filled with stories of the antics of the 60 former cowpunchers. Some were bankers, some merchants, some lawyers, but they all could throw a wicked rope and ride any animal that could be saddled. Dressed to the hilt in full Western regalia, it was the first and only time that a band of cowpunchers from 90 NEBRASKAland the range had ridden in an inaugural parade and galloped up on the White House lawn. They made the most of it.

During the latter part of 1905, Omaha Democrats began to look around for a candidate for mayor and decided to ask Jim. At first he was reluctant, but politics was in his blood. He made a vigorous campaign, speaking two or three times a night. His manner and his expressions, redolent of the range, captured his audiences. Political ire was fanned, because his attitude was so different from any that had ever challenged voters before.

One of the charges made against him was he's "just a cowboy", to which he replied.

"I am a cowboy and I'm proud of it. When I first met President Roosevelt he was a cowboy. If the American people can afford to elect a cowboy president of the U.S., I believe the people of Omaha can afford to elect a cowboy mayor."

Others said he wouldn't even be able to write a veto message if elected mayor.

"I'll just write nothin' doin'. Any sucker that can't understand that ain't as well educated as I am," Jim retorted.

At the Democratic National Convention in 1908 in Denver, Dahlman's short-lived boom for governor of Nebraska was launched. The day to fulfill his promise of "free beer on the statehouse lawn on inauguration day," never came.

Of the 21 years that Dahlman was mayor of Omaha, the only time he was defeated was in 1918 during the war. Though a liberal mayor, he was hardly a reformer. Illegal enterprises sometimes operated during his regime and he was criticized for not cracking down, yet he was never personally accused of being a party to corruption.

He always had time for the wife of a jailed inebriate, a kid's parade, or a visiting foreign dignitary. When he died in 1930, waging his ninth campaign for the mayorality, he was broke. Omaha funeral directors gave him a lavish funeral free and 75,000 in overalls and four-in-hand ties, passed by to pay their respects. They never forgot what he said when first elected mayor of Omaha.

"You will always find me the same
 plain Jim Dahlman that I have always 
been."

He kept that promise.

"HEAD THEM UP"

Platte, nestled Ogallala, the Gomorrah
 of the cattle trail. From amongst its 
half-hundred buildings, no church spire 
pointed upward, but instead three-
fourths of its business houses were
 dance halls, gambling houses, and
 saloons."

The arrival of the trail herds would always bring the hibernating town to life. Saloonkeepers brought out their bottles, gamblers started shuffling their cards, store clerks and hotelkeepers would begin to hawk their individual wares, and the sheriff strapped on his guns.

Loose talk about "rebels" or "Yankee bean-eaters" was enough to start fierce

donnybrooks. And quite often the losers ended up in Boot Hill. Even travelers who never stepped out of the safety of their hotel rooms had to admit that Ogallala was one of the liveliest towns along the U.P.

"Gold flowed freely across the tables, liquor across the bar, and occasionally blood across the floor, as a smoking gun in the hands of a jealous rival or an angered gambler brought an end of the trail to some unfortunate cowhand on the stained boards of 'Tuck's Saloon'," historian Norbert Mahnken noted.

Three cowboys, who tangled with the Keith County sheriff at Ogallala in July 1879, were buried in a single day in Boot Hill. Another of the Boot Hill burials was for "Rattlesnake Ed" Worley who was shot over a $9 bet in a monte game at the Crystal Palace saloon. Today the cemetery, on a wind-swept hill in northwest Ogallala, is a historical and tourist site.

Other frequenters of Ogallala were Luke Short, a professional gambler, gunman Doc Middleton, outlaw Sam Starr, and the outlaw queen, Belle Starr.

While their cowhands unwound in Ogallala's pleasure spots, Texas cattle kings met in hotels and saloons with shrewd and calculating buyers from Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana, and Nebraska to haggle over prices for the lean and cantankerous longhorns.

Loyalty to his boss back in Texas was not always an outstanding characteristic of the drover, once he received the money for the herd. Texans Joel Collins and Sam Bass, after hearing of the Black Hills' gold strikes, appropriated the money due to some Texas cattlemen and headed for the diggings in search of instant wealth. Gambling losses and investments in unproductive mines left the twosome broke. After gathering a crew of like-minded individuals, they turned to stage coach robbery. The arrival of federal troops broke up this activity and the outlaws headed back to Ogallala about September 1877. Over a corner table in the Crystal Palace, they worked out the details of another money-making investment —robbing the pay coach of the Union Pacific.

In the early morning hours of September 19, the first robbery in the history of the Union Pacific took place at Big Springs, 20 miles west of Ogallala. It netted the bandits $60,000 in newly-minted $20 gold pieces. The Union Pacific officials promptly posted a $10,000 reward.

One of the train passengers identified Collins as one of the bandits, while an Ogallala store owner identified a piece of brilliantly colored, red, white, and black cloth used as a mask during the robbery, as having been purchased in his store by one of the Collins-Bass gang. It wasn't long before the gang's descriptions were being telegraphed up and down the line.

Collins and another of his gang were killed resisting arrest at Buffalo Station, Kansas. Another of the outlaws, Jim Berry, met the same fate at Mexico, Missouri, but Bass and Tom Nixon made 92 NEBRASKAland their way safely to Texas under the guise of land purchasers.

Ten months of notoriety followed Sam Bass, before he, too, was cut down on his 27th birthday by the bullets of the Texas Rangers. His legend lived on, however, in the most celebrated of all cowboy ballads and a movie based on his historic train robbery.

Six sheriffs in one five-year period says something for Ogallala, whether it shows the death rate of sheriffs, the toughness of the cowhands, or a high retirement rate for the sheriff business is not provable although reports of cowboy devilishness must have had a lot to do with it.

The real low point in Ogallala's string of sheriffs came in 1878 when Barney Gillan was appointed to the post. A Texan himself, he considered it his duty to protect the cowboys rather than preserve law and order. And from what has been read and heard about the cowboy, he didn't really need that much protecting.

In his zeal to help out the cowboy plus himself, Gillan became involved in the most infamous act by a lawman in the state's history. Bob Olive, brother of I. P. "Print" Olive, kingpin of the Texas cattlemen claiming the range in Custer County, was shot and killed by two homesteaders. The pair, thinking they would be safer with the law than running from Print Olive's gunslingers, gave themselves up to Sheriff Gillan. The sheriff promptly turned the two over to Olive's henchmen and collected the reward. The nesters were then hanged from a tree, shot, their bodies burned, and placed on exhibition.

Gillan was later arrested, indicted for complicity in the murders, and brought to trial. Before it ended, Gillan escaped from the Kearney jail and disappeared.

On the other end of the string was Sheriff Martin DePriest, who comprised the law in Ogallala from 1879 to 1888. Another Texan, who came up the trail in 1877, DePriest had few equals in a fight. He also understood the longing of the cowhand, fresh off the trail, for some good rowdy fun.

Drinking, gambling, and consorting with the "soiled doves" were all good fun to Mart. He shrugged off such noisy activities as shooting holes in the air as "harmless sport". In spite of his easy-going attitude, trigger-happy gunmen found DePriest's deliberate coolness a better match than their own practiced speed in a showdown.

Not all of the cowhands who came to Ogallala to let off steam hit the trail again. Many of the trail cowboys settled in the area, helping to establish the state's cattle industry. Several fourth-generation Nebraska ranchers are descendents of these trail-hitting Texans.

Although the cattle industry bloomed in Ogallala and the surrounding area, the best of the cattle country - the Sand Hills-remained unpenetrated until about 1879. That year, Frank North decided to take a herd straight through the hills from the roundup on Blue Creek to his home ranch on the Dismal River. After going about 35 miles through the supposedly dry country, he came upon a lake. It was surrounded by about 700 cattle in much better shape than those he had gathered in the roundup.

At about the same time, the Newman Brothers Ranch in Western Nebraska had a similar experience. A March blizzard drove 6,000 head past their line-riders into the hills. In an effort to save some of them, the manager sent a round-up into the hills in April after the snow had melted. After five weeks work, the crew brought out about 8,000 head of Newman cattle and additional 1,000 head of unbranded stock, descendents of animals that had previously drifted into the hills.

During the horrible winter of 1880-'81, thousands of cattle died in the Platte Valley, but the Cody-North ranch lost only a few critters on the Sand Hills' range.

It didn't take many incidents like these to convince the local cattlemen that they were overlooking the best range in the West.

Settlers in northwest Kansas and southwest Nebraska invoked herd laws to put an abrupt end to Texas Trail drives in the mid-1880's. But enough long-horns had come up from Texas to establish a new industry in Nebraska, the cattle industry.

With the end of the drives, other influences put a halt to Ogallala's infamous, evil days. The Congregational Church, organized in 1884, was just one sign of the changing times.

Things were changing in the Sand Hills, too. Blooded stock, imported from England, was replacing the ornery and resourceful longhorn. The cow nurse, the gambler, and the hired gun were going down the road to oblivion. Ranches were fenced and the old turn-of-a-card buying and selling gave way to careful financing of land and critters.

Ogallala was tamer now, anxious to 
forget its wild days and don the cloak
 of respectability. The changes were in
evitable, but with their coming, the 
richness and romance that belonged to 
the West began to fade. And that's to 
be regretted.

THE END

THEY GAVE OF THEMSELVES

one, and had not borne arms against the United States was entitled to file on 160 acres.

Bringing a colony of homesteaders to the Plains took planning and often the most trusted leaders in the group were given the task of finding suitable farmlands In 1865, Herman Braasch and Fredrick Wagner, acting as scouts for a German community in Wisconsin, hired a man and a wagon at West Point to take them on an inspection tour farther up the valley and away from the present settlements. About four miles above the north fork of the Elkhorn River, the two

men decided on a suitable site for their colony.

On May 14, 1866, the colony, consisting of 24 families with a total of 125 people, started its long journey in covered wagons to the prairie farmland. The Germans were tired when they reached West Point, but the excitement of nearing their new home pushed the group on.

Crossing a river, or even a stream, presented difficulties. If a Jieavy rain hit the area, travelers might have to wait a day or more before crossing. In some places, muddy stream bottoms could stick a wagon so deep that horses could not pull it free. Sometimes the travelers licked the problems of the journey only to find that the prairie had some more surprises. As the wagons rumbled to the site of their new home, smiles 60on faded to frowns as the Germans found a group of squatters on their pre-picked property. After a long discussion, the squatters agreed to move and the Germans took over.

At first, the colonists lived in their wagons as they worked to build the settlement. The land along the river was laid out in 160-acre plots with each piece of property fronting on the river. After the land was surveyed, a slip of paper carrying the number of one of the tracts of land was drawn from one hat by a blindfolded man and another piece of paper bearing the name of a family was picked from a second hat. Then the men filed claims for their matched-up property. The settlers called the community North Fork, later changed to Norfolk.

Germans came to Nebraska for various reasons. The 32 Germans who settled Hall County in 1857 were fugitives from Prussian militarism. In the summer of 1864, when homesteaders were fleeing from bands of hostile Indians, those same stout-hearted Germans refused to leave their claims and fortified their homes.

The railroads played a key role in bringing German Mennonites as well as other ethnic groups into the state. Each railroad sent agents to Europe to vie for settlers and competition was often keen. Each agent had a sparkling spiel of what their area offered and often passed out pictures and maps.

Railroad agents were super salesmen, and competing agents were thrown into a throat-cutting battle when the Mennonites, seeking religious tolerance, fled to North America from Russia and Prussia between 1873 and 1883.

This migration presented agents with a unique and challenging problem. Thousands of potential settlers were pouring into the United States and few knew where they were going to homestead. A party of 12 Mennonites was sent from Europe to look over various sites for colonies and although the grounds appeared fertile in Nebraska, the scouts found the land hilly and lacking good water and timber. The chief land agent of the Burlington Railroad, Albert E. Touzalin, had to regroup his forces and do a convincing job of advertising and salesmanship to get Nebraska's share of the Mennonite influx. Under this suggestion, the Burlington stationed agents in New York to advise 94 NEBRASKAland incoming immigrants of the advantages of settling in Nebraska.

Touzalin showed his influence in the legislature when a Kansas newspaper threw a kink in his campaign for settlers. The paper reminded the Mennonites that in Nebraska they would be subject to a state-military draft, while in Kansas they were exempt from the service. Circulars were in the mail 29 days after the article appeared, announcing Nebraska's newly-amended law that exempted the group from military service.

In Nebraska's fight for the Mennonite settlers, the agents won several battles, but they also lost many to competing states. When the smoke cleared, Mennonites were living in Gage, Jefferson, York, Hamilton, and Seward counties.

Nebraska was growing and with the help of railroads, and private and public organizations, settlers were finding the state's wide open spaces to their liking. Union Pacific Railroad propaganda describing Nebraska as a "Garden of Eden", the Homestead Act, and the hope of economic betterment lured 27-year-old Rasmus Nielsen away from his native Denmark.

Nielsen found a home in Howard County near Dannebrog, a Danish community. Here, he was allowed to speak Danish in a country that understood many languages. Like the Czech town of Wilber and the German town of Sutton, Dannebrog appeared as an ethnic island in the middle of the prairie, upholding \the traditions of the homeland.

Young Nielsen, like many foreign immigrants, found fault with his new home. The railroad had described Nebraska as a "Garden of Eden", Nielsen preferred to call it "Siberia" at first. Comparing the land to his native home, he found the "scorching winds in summer or the roaring blizzards of winter" extremely distasteful. From a fish-eating country, he had come to a prairie where a fish dinner was a rarity. But Nielsen soon found happiness in economic security and his Ashless frontier soon became a prosperous home.

Nielsen was typical of the many Scandinavins moving into Nebraska. The Swedes were the more numerous of the group. An 1870 population of 2,352 grew to more than 27,000 by 1890. Most of the immigrants who moved into Nebraska came from rural districts in Sweden and nearly all were laborers. The Swedes for the most part left their homelands because the land was not productive enough to support large populations.

The first Swedish influx came in the late 1860's when the railroad offered job opportunities. On hand to help the Swedish immigrants was Rev. S. G. Larson, active in the establishment of a Swedish settlement in Saunders County. As more and more Swedes came into Saunders County to claim homesteads or buy lands from the U.P., the towns of Mead, Swedeburg, and Malmo developed into Swedish population centers.

Reverend Larson's influence in bringing Swedes into Nebraska spread over the country when he founded the Swedish Commercial Company. The organization was established to promote

settlement in Nebraska by urging fellow Swedes to leave their homeland. As in the case of other ethnic groups, the church played a prominent part in the settlement of Nebraska's Swedish pioneers. In many cases, religious services were held in the native tongue.

One of the first Swedish settlements in Nebraska was established in 1864 when immigrants from Dahlsland, Sweden, settled in the Oakland area. This thriving village soon became the jumping-off point for other Swedish settlers who fanned out toward Wakefield, Wausa, Stromsberg, Holdrege, Axtel, and Gothenberg.

In its 100 years of statehood Nebraska became a melting pot of nationalities as people from across the Atlantic Ocean came with the hope of finding a prosperous life. Many found it. Others found the rugged life too demanding.

As the modern pioneer looks back to Nebraska's frontier, he sees only its romance. But to those who lived in sod houses and broke the virgin prairie soil, they found life far from romantic. The foreign born came to the prairie as young innocents, expecting to find a land much like the Old Country. Instead, they found a rolling prairie plagued with drought, grasshoppers, blizzards, disease, and death. In place of cultured cities, they found rowdy towns. But for those who overcame personal tragedy, life soon became fruitful and many fulfilled their fondest dreams.

The immigrants brought with them a
 vigor and culture that helped to make
 Nebraska one of the most versatile and
 colorful states in the Union. They gave 
this state a part of themselves to build 
a great heritage, a rich history, and a
 confident future.

FOR EACH HIS OWN

could not have known. Nearly 3 million acres of rich Nebraska land are irrigated from streams and pumps. The next drouth will have an impact, but it can hardly be as devastating as the rainless years in the 30's.

Nebraska's underground water isn't inexhaustible, however. Farmers are drilling more wells every year, and lawmakers are studying ways to conserve and assure the wise use of this resource.

Water resource planning is getting attention from more than state government. Urban industries, city governments, farm organizations, power districts, and sports enthusiasts are interested. Eventually, agriculture must compete compatibly with urban industry for water. Engineers have developed an experimental radio control for irrigation pumps. Devices which measure moisture level are buried in the soil and through radio impulses automatically start and shut off the irrigation system.

But the revolution in agriculture isn't over by any means. It's just beginning. On today's farm, advances in mechanization are as dramatic as anything in agriculture. Mechanization has already progressed from the horse-drawn plow to the five-bottom plow pulled by a tractor with an air-conditioned cab. The operator tunes his radio in on the market news. He may soon have television in the cab to show implement performance or how some other part of his farming operation is going while he's out in the field.

Looking a little further ahead, this field work may be done by robot machinery. Research engineers are already trying out radio-controlled tractors. In addition, farmers may install control devices in their leveled fields which will guide their implements without manual supervision. They will simply move their machine to the field. Radio, plus the control mechanism, will take over the operation and shut off the motor when the job is finished.

Some traditional farm machines are in for a face-lifting. Agronomists have demonstrated that under certain conditions, yields can be significantly increased by use of narrow rows. It was the horse that dictated the width of the traditional 40-inch row spacing. Farmer acceptance of the narrow row has been slow because of machinery problems, but these are being solved. In the next decade narrow-row spacings will be common for corn, sorghum, and soybeans. Some experimental corn plots, planted in 30-inch rows, have already yielded at the rate of 225 bushels per acre. Remember what a splash the first 100-bushel-per-acre corn made?

For the past 30 years there has been a fairly constant decline in number of farms over the nation. In Nebraska, numbers have been declining about two per cent a year in the last 10 years and farms have grown correspondingly larger. Most economists expect the trend toward bigger operations and bigger units to continue but even with this increase in farm size. However, most units are still family operated. The average farmer has a capital investment of about $100,000 in his layout.

Dr. E. F. Frolik, dean of the University of Nebraska College of Agriculture and Home Economics, predicts that if farms do continue to grow in size, we will see a corresponding shift to even more specialized operations. Fewer units will be involved in the finishing of beef cattle. Finishing will be on a larger scale, using the most modern equipment and techniques. There will be a striking increase in the number of operators who keep 200 to 1,000 animals in the lots the year round. This year, 900 feeders in Nebraska will each finish 500 or more head of cattle.

America's and Nebraska's farmer also represent the world's best argument for education — education for all rather than a select few.

It's worth noting, in this Centennial Year, that agricultural education for the man on the land, and for his family, took its most significant stride just a little more than 100 years ago when President Lincoln signed the Morrill Act. This became the foundation of our land-grant college system. Nebraska's legislature provided that this state would have a part in the system when it chartered the University of Nebraska and its College of Agriculture in 1869.

Perhaps as important to agricultural progress as the Morrill Act, was the law that created the Agricultural Extension Service, the off-campus education arm of the land-grant colleges. Best known through the work of its county agricultural and home agents, the Extention Service was formally organized with the passage of the Smith-Lever Act in 1914.

In the early years, farmers were sometimes suspicious of the "book learning" that came out of their colleges. There were long delays before new techniques were applied on the farm.

Since World War II, both scientific advances and the practical use of science by farmers has snowballed. Hybrid sorghum, for example, was developed with leadership from the University of Nebraska and made available to growers in 1957. It was accepted immediately.

It is true that efficiency of production and overabundance have brought surpluses and sometimes have thrown the farmers' price structures out of kilter. But millions of people around the world are still hungry.

By the end of this century, world population will probably exceed 6 billion people, about twice the present population. Some predictions place the United States population at 320 million by the year 2,000, compared with about 200 million now.

Somehow a way must be found to feed
 these vast numbers. Nebraska farmers
 and ranchers, who operate one of the most efficient agricultural industries 
in the world, are confident they can meet 
the challenge.

THE FIGHT TO BELONG

proclamation. Some of the members, oblivious to his order, assembled anyway, only to find the doors barred to them. They managed to get into the legislative chambers, but there was nothing to do once they were inside, so they left.

Thus ran the state government until nearly the middle of 1875. Then on May 11, the delegates once again convened to draft another constitution. When they adjourned on June 12, 1875, they had adopted a document which closely paralleled its forerunner. This time though, they carefully avoided alienating anyone.

On October 12, 1875, the new document was put to the people of the state and accepted, to become the law of the land.

For over 20 years the people of Nebraska had fought for the right to join the Union and to draft a suitable code of laws. Their fight ended in victory. Because of their struggle, Nebraskans today share a feeling of security they might otherwise have never known in a state that adheres rigidly to its motto: "Equality Before The Law."

BIG MEDICINE TRAIL

Kansas-Nebraska Bill opened Nebraska Territory to white settlers, free-land hunters swarmed across the prairie. The 1859 discovery of gold around Pikes Peak brought another tidal wave of fortune seekers. The Civil War brought a lull, but as soon as it was over, a tide of homesteaders, spurred by the Homestead Act, swept in from the East and South.

Along with this great population shift came attendant evils such as cholera. In 1832, some Irish immigrants brought the disease into Canada and it spread into New York, followed the rivers to New Orleans and up the Missouri in 1835. At Bellevue in June 1835, symptoms of the disease showed up in the party of Lucien Fontenelle. Fortunately, the medical missionary, Marcus Whitman, was in the party, and he put up a 12-day battle against the dread killer to save the caravan. The only medicine he had was calomel, and that was no real help, but only three of the party died.

This attack was light in comparison to the terrible epidemic that swept the Oregon Trail in 1849. Trains would often cut out the infected wagons and leave them behind, but since these were the years of the great emigration and one wagon train was hardly gone before another came, the results were not always as tragic as they might have been. A new caravan would pick up the sick after they had recovered or leave them some supplies. The dead were buried beside the trail and their graves obliterated to prevent desecration by the Indians.

On the heels of the wagon trains, the U.S. Cavalry thundered down the Oregon Trail. The government established military posts along the trail during the 1840's. Fort Kearny was the first built in 1846 at Table Creek, now Nebraska City, but the army found this spot too far from the main line of travel, so in 1848, the fort was moved to the southernmost point of the big bend of the Platte. In 1849, the government bought Fort Laramie, which was then Nebraska Territory, from the American Fur Company, and turned it into a military fort to police the Indians, protect settlers, and assist travelers.

Great quantities of supplies came from the East for the forts, settlers, and miners. Some of these huge wagons carried five tons and required a yoke of 12 oxen to pull them. Later mule teams were used because they were faster, reaching a speed of two miles per hour. One of the big mule-team freight companies, Russell, Majors, and Waddell, was located at Nebraska City.

The first stagecoach line on the Oregon Trail through the Platte Valley began operation in 1850. The stages hauled passengers, express, and mail on a 38-day schedule to California. Later, it became a 19-day run in good weather.

As more and more Conestoga wagons and the stagecoaches used the Oregon Trail it lost its name and became the Overland Trail or Overland Road. As a stagecoach road it took advantage of all the passes and bridges made by earlier travelers, and naturally avoided river crossings. The Ox-bow Trail was a round-about way which went northwest from Nebraska City, crossed Salt Creek at Ashland, and joined the Overland Road at the Platte River near the present town of Cedar Bluffs in central Nebraska.

With the forts for protection and the stages and freight wagons making regular trips, small parties began to feel safe in traveling the Oregon Trail. Such a party was the Sanford-Clark party of two couples, and two drivers. This party started April 12, 1860 for the Denver gold fields with a span of ponies, two head of oxen, and three wagons.

Travel was slow and arduous, and Mollie Sanford writes: "We came 10 miles today." Another entry: "Traveled 22 miles today, and all are tired." It took the Sanford-Clark party from April 12 to April 26 to reach the Platte River. When they passed Fort Kearny she mentions seeing many soldiers and writes:

"Emigration is immense. We hear that 70,000 persons have already passed over this route going west."

Even by 1866, stagecoach travel was only for the rugged. Gurdon P. Lester who came from Lodomillo, Iowa to take a stage out of Omaha, tells what Nebraska was like in the spring.

"It is dangerous for a person to step out for fear of getting swamped in this Nebraska mud. Did I own a quarter section of land here I wouldn't have a regiment of soldiers travel over it short of the price of the land, for they certainly would carry it all off on their feet."

The stage ticket was costly. Lester reports in his journal:

"Went down to the office of the Overland Stage and secured seats for Virginia City, Montana Territory at the moderate sum of $350, allowing us to carry 25 pounds of luggage."

Traveler Lester had had bedfellows. He writes: "Was awakened early...by bedbugs gnawing on my delicate frame to say nothing of the myriad of fleas that were cantering over me the whole night."

Lester got as far as Lamb's Station, near Wood River, and had to wait over a week for the next stage. He describes his frustration and expiates on unlimited luxury enjoyed by others.

"Today, Tuesday at 12 o'clock we find ourselves in no more flattering prospects than we have had for the past three days. Today there came a chartered coach occupied by two New York gents bound for California. They were young fellows, not more than 2£t years, and paid $4,000 for the exclusive right of the coach from Atchinson to Virginia City, Nevada. They had a full armament of guns, pistols, and knives to say nothing of the cigars and liquors absolutely necessary for such a pleasure excursion."

Gurdon Lester took the long wait, fleas, and bedbugs with good grace, for he was aware of what was going on about him. Buffalo was only one of the many things that excited his interest.

"Today, we saw some dark objects far to the south and those who are best acquainted call them buffalo. Although they are five or six miles off we can see them distinctly or enough so as to know they are the bovine specie," he wrote.

The great westward flow of wagon trains thrills him also. He writes: "Freight, freight, freight, nothing but one continual string of freight teams from dewy morn till dusky eve bound for the West. Ho! Westward the star of Empire takes its way. Who wouldn't go to the beautiful West? It must certainly be him, who's not spunk enough to travel beyond his native cot."

Lester was right, spunk and guts did
 open an unexplored half-continent. Today, Americans show the same spirit,
 bravery, and love of the unknown as
 they yearn toward a new land called 
the moon.