History of Gage County, Nebraska; a narrative of the past, with special emphasis upon the pioneer period of the county's history, its social, commercial, educational, religious, and civic development from the early days to the present time, Part 10

Author: Dobbs, Hugh Jackson, 1849-
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Lincoln, Neb., Western Publishing and Engraving Company
Number of Pages: 1120

USA > Nebraska > Gage County > History of Gage County, Nebraska; a narrative of the past, with special emphasis upon the pioneer period of the county's history, its social, commercial, educational, religious, and civic development from the early days to the present time > Part 10

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The figure on the hill is that of Mr. Alberts, editor of the MORTON HISTORY.

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

undisputed possession of Oregon. To prove fore the prairies became too dry, the natural the accessibility of Oregon to settlers he assist- ed in leading a large party of emigrants, in 1843, from Independence to the Columbia river. In 1844, at the suggestion of the sec- retary of war, he prepared a bill for passage by congress, which provided for the establish- ment of military posts along the trail front Papin's Ferry to the Pacific coast, for the protection of emigration. Writing of this measure, to the secretary, in 1844, he says :

"I have since our last interview, been in- strumental in piloting across the route de- scribed in the accompanying bill and which is the only eligible wagon road, no less than two hundred families, consisting of one thousand persons, of both sexes, with their wagons. amounting in all to more than one hundred and twenty, with six hundred and ninety-four oxen and seven hundred and seventy-three loose cattle. As pioneers these people have established a durable road from Missouri to Oregon, which will serve to mark permanently the route for larger numbers for each suc- ceeding year."

On the arrival of these emigrants, in 1843, a provisional government was formed for Ore- gon, and on the withdrawal by England of her claims, Oregon, in 1848, was erected into a territory of the United States. These results are justly attributable to the indefatigable en- ergy, courage and patriotic ardor of Dr. Mar- cus Whitman.

"As a highway of travel the Oregon Trail is the most remarkable known to history. Con- sidering the fact that it originated with the spontaneous use of travelers; that no transit ever located a foot of it; that no level estab- lished its grades ; that no engineer sought out the fords or built any bridges or surveyed thie mountain passes ; that there was no grading to speak of nor any attempt at metalling the road-bed ;- and the general good quality of this two thousand miles of highway will seem most extraordinary. Father De Smet, who was born in Belgium, the home of good roads, pronounced the Oregon Trail one of the finest highways in the world. At the proper season of the year this was undoubtedly true. Be-

turf formed the best roadway for horses to travel on that has probably ever been known. It was amply hard to sustain traffic, yet soft enough to be easier to the feet than even the most perfect asphalt pavement. Over such roads, winding ribbon-like through the verdant prairies, amid the profusion of spring flowers, with grass so plentiful that the animals reveled in its abundance, and game everywhere greet- ed the hunter's rifle, and finally, with pure water in the streams, the traveler sped his way

PETER J. DE SMET, S. J.

with a feeling of joy and exhilaration. But not so when the prairies became dry and parch- ed, the road filled with stifling dust, the stream-beds mere dry ravines, or carrying only alkaline water which could not be used, the game all gone to more hospitable sections, and the summer sun pouring down its heat with torrid intensity. It was then that the Trail became a highway of desolation, strewn with abandoned property, the skeletons of horses, mules and oxen, and, alas, too often, with freshly made mounds and head boards that told the pitiful tale of suffering too great to be endured. If the trail was the scene of ro- mance, adventure, pleasure. and excitement,

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

so it was marked in every mile of its course in the history of the old highway. Branch by human misery, tragedy and death. lines shot out from Fort Leavenworth, Atchi- "The immense travel which in later years passed over the trail carved it into a deep fur- row, often with several parallel tracks making a total of a hundred feet or more. It was an astonishing spectacle, even to white men, when seen for the first time. It may easily be imagined how great an impression the sight of this road must have made upon the minds of the Indians. Father De Smet has recorded some interesting observations upon this point. son, St. Joseph, Brownville, Nebraska City, and other Missouri river towns, all converg- ing upon the old trail and intersecting it before it reached Fort Kearney. The most noted of these has already been mentioned as starting from the vicinity of Council Bluffs and thread- ing the valley of the Platte, north of the river. -the avant courier of the Union Pacific Rail- road. The non-Mormon travel along this route, though bound to California, Oregon, and the northwest, followed it to Shinn's Ferry or a ford in the immediate neighborhood of Fort Kearney, and, crossing the Platte, con- tinued on up the south side of the river, tra- versing the Independence trail. As time developed the necessity for diverting travel to the gold fields of Colorado and other sec- tions of the great west, branch lines led away from the Oregon Trail, to Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Denver, and the southwest, as far even as Santa Fe, but until the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad, in 1867-1868, the Oregon Trail, its cutoffs and numerous branches leading into and away from it, was the sole connected line of travel across the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean, and the usual means of communication throughout the great plains and Rocky moun- tain regions of the west, as well as the entire Pacific slope.

"In 1851 he traveled, in company with a large number of Indians, from the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers to Fort Laramie, where a great council was held that year to form treaties with the several tribes. Most of these Indians had not been in that section before and were quite unprepared for what they saw. 'Our Indian companions,' says Father De Smet, 'who had never seen but the narrow hunting paths by which they transport themselves and their lodges, were filled with admiration on seeing this noble highway, which is as smooth as a barn floor swept by winds, and not a blade of grass can shoot up on it on account of the continual passing. They conceived a high idea of the countless White Nation, as they ex- press it. They fancied that all had gone over that road and that an immense void must ex- ist in the land of the rising sun. Their coun- tenances testified evident incredulity when I told them that their exit was in no wise per- ceived in the land of the whites. They styled the route the Great Medicine Road of the Whites.' " 3

The settlement and development of the west produced many changes in the old Trail as known to Frémont, the "Pathfinder," and other early western travelers and explorers. In February, 1859, the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad was completed to St. Joseph, Mis- souri, and in 1861 it was extended to Atchison, Kansas. During the late '50s and early '60s navigation on the Missouri attained its great- est volume and towns sprung up as by magic along its banks. Each progressive step in the march of western development was reflected

No statistics are available which in brief compass illustrate the tremendous importance of the great trail, considered as a unit. The following news item taken from the Dakota City Herald, under date of August 13, 1859. affords some evidence of the volume of travel and emigration on the route from Council Bluffs and Omaha up the Platte valley, at that early date :

"The secretary of the Columbus Ferry Com- pany at Loup Fork informs the Omaha Ne- braskian that the emigration across the plains up to June 25th was as follows : 1807 wagons, 20 hand carts, 5401 men, 434 women, 480 children, 1610 horses, 406 mules, 610 oxen, 6000 sheep, had crossed this ferry at that point. This statement includes no portion of the

3 Hist. Am. Fur Trade, vol. i, Chitenden.

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

Mormon emigration, but embraces merely Cali- fornia, Oregon and Pike's Peak emigrants and their stock, all going westward. The return- ing emigration crosses at Shinn's Ferry, some fifteen miles below the confluence of the Loup Fork with the Platte. Many of the outward- bound emigrants also crossed at the same point, so it is probable that not less than 4000 wagons have passed over the Military Road westward from this city since the 20th of March."

The reader will observe from the foregoing extract that the uses made of the old trail were many and varied. In 1859 the high tide of western travel and emigration had not been reached, but from that year forward to the completion of the Union Pacific Railway, it increased by leaps and bounds. From a dim, narrow roadway, traveled at wide intervals by exploring. surveying, and military expeditions and thin lines of emigration, it expanded under its increasing usefulness into a broad, smooth, hard-beaten highway of great national inter- est and importance. Unlike the Appian Way and other great roads centering in Rome, the products of military necessity and ambition, the Oregon Trail in all its branches and ramifica- tions was wholly devoted to the arts of peace and the activities of a young and mighty na- tion.

As a route of emigration its value and use- fulness can never be exaggerated. Long before a transcontinental railway was projected, when in fact railway construction was yet in its in- fancy in this country, it was the means of peopling Utah, Oregon, California, Colorado, and other sections of the great west. Over it travel was maintained across the continent of North America. Travelers bent on business or pleasure and persons engaged in the diplo- matic service of foreign countries freely made use of this great thoroughfare, to escape the long, tedious, and often dangerous sea voyage around Cape Horn, to and from the Orient.

The military occupation of the west by our government, and the tremendous emigration that followed it, gave rise to a freighting in- dustry by mule and ox trains unlike anything previously known in our history, and this

formed a most conspicuous element in the use- fulness of the trail. No statistics are avail- able to give an adequate idea of the tremen- dous volume of goods annually carried across the plains when this industry was at its max- imum. As early as 1861, Nebraska City, by becoming the headquarters of the firm of Rus- sell, Majors & Waddell, contractors for the transportation of government freight to the far west, grew quickly into one of the principal outfitting towns on the Missouri river. A cen- sus of the freighting business from that point taken for the year 1865 showed the following figures : Men employed in the movement of grain and merchandise westward, 8,385; wagons, 7,365; mules, 7,231; oxen, 50,712; freight transported, 31,445,428 pounds. When it is considered that Nebraska City was only one of several great outfitting stations on the Oregon Trail and its branches, that most of the freight was carried long distances over plain and mountain, across unbridged streams, in huge, creaking, linch-pin, thick-tired, can- vas-covered wagons, capable of transporting from seven to ten tons of freight and drawn by from five to ten yoke of oxen or more, trav- eling at the rate of two miles an hour and re- quiring months to make the round trip, the gigantic proportions of this industry must be apparent to the dullest mind.

The following description of Nebraska City in its pristine days as a terminus of freight traffic is taken from a letter written from near there in 1866, and is fairly representative of the scenes constantly occurring at all Missouri river outfitting towns for freight traffic across the plains :

The streets are not filled with carriages and gay equipages, though I saw some elegant turnouts, but there are huge freight wagons on every street, at every corner ; there are hun- dreds of oxen and mules attached to them. Often ten yoke of oxen to a wagon, - six span, oftener four, of mules driven with one line. There is heard the lumbering of these "prairie schooners." the bellowing of oxen, braying of mules, cracking of long whips, which for me is a show of itself, to see the dex- terity with which the drivers use them. There is the hallowing, yelling of teamsters, mingled

OTHING.

FREIGHTING SCENES ALONG THE OREGON TRAIL

The lower view represents the freighting train known as "Bull of the Woods," owned by Alexander and James Carlisle. From a photograph taken on Main street, Nebraska City, looking east from Sixth street, and loaned by Mr. O. C. Morton. This train consisted of twenty-five wagons with six mules to each wagon, and was considered one of the finest outfits known to freighters.

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

with more oaths than I have ever heard before in all my life together. Everything is high in this prairie land. My mother sells some of her butter for sixty cents per pound, none less than fifty cents, and that at home; cheese thirty cents and thirty-five cents; and so on with everything. The great amount of travel on the road half a mile from us makes all the market one needs at present. Trains passing with thirty wagons (twenty-four or eighteen, those being the usual numbers) are or have been un- til recently of almost daily occurrence, -- some going to the mountains, others going to the states. It is also the stage route (or one) of Ben Holliday's express through to California, so that we have a daily mail one day from the west, the next from the east. It seems odd in such a new country, so devoid of almost every- thing civilized, to see the coach daily, going and coming.

As a highway for the Overland stage from the Missouri river to the Pacific coast the great trail performed a most interesting and a most important service to the American people. Light Concord coaches were usually required for this service, and with the rapid growth of the west, the business ultimately attained huge proportions.

From 1850 down to the date when the old trail ultimately fell into disuse the overland stage was largely devoted to the carrying of the mails. The carrying of passengers and ex- press packages also formed important items of its receipts. At first monthly trips were made, then semi-monthly, and finally - when the overland-stage business fell into the hands of Ben Holliday, who in many respects was one of the most remarkable men of his day - a stage service was evolved in which stages ran daily on fast and schedule time from Atchison, Kansas, to Placerville, California, in the re- markably short period of seventeen days, car- rying mail and passengers each way.

An important incident to the old highway was the pony express, a movement which orig- inated, in 1860, with William H. Russell, of Leavenworth, Kansas. It was a system of mounted couriers, wholly devoted to the private transmission of letter-mail, newspapers, tele- graph messages, important government dis- patches, bank drafts, and the like. It followed

the St. Joseph branch of the Overland trail to Kennekuk, forty-four miles out from the Mis- souri river, where it intersected the main Inde- pendence line, and thereafter followed the old trail to Fort Kearney, thence on up the Platte valley to old Julesburg, where it forded the South Fork, followed the old Mormon trail up Lodge Pole creek, thence through the Great South Pass to Fort Bridger, Salt Lake City, and on to Sacramento, where it connected with navigation on the Sacramento river to San Francisco. The trip from its eastern terminus, at St. Joseph, Missouri, to its western terminus usually required eight days, and the return trip the same number of days. It was inaug- urated at five o'clock in the afternoon of the 3d day of April, 1860, with many demonstrations of satisfaction throughout its entire course across mountain and plain. At San Francisco cannon were fired, flags displayed, speeches made, flowers distributed, and at both terminals crowds gathered to witness the departure of the first daring rider of the pony express. The horses selected for this service were hardy and fleet plains stock. The equipment consisted of a strong, well made saddle and a mail sack of the old-fashioned saddle-bags pattern, and an emergency. lariat. The rider was booted and spurred. A leathern holster on either side of the pommel of his saddle carried a navy re- volver. No time was wasted at the stations where changes of horses, and often of riders, were made. Usually the rider found his mount already groomed, saddled, and held by an assistant awaiting his arrival. He had only to change his holsters and mail bags from one saddle to the other, mount the fresh steed and away with the speed of the winds. At sta- tions where riders were relieved, the fresh rider would be awaiting the incoming man, mounted and ready to fly on his journey.

This service lasted approximately eighteen months and was discontinued only when the telegraph line, of which it was the avant cour- ier, reached Fort Kearney, in 1861. It was by far the most picturesque feature of over- land travel along the wonderful old trail, and no other business venture of the great plains region had a more daring or romantic history

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

or left a more lasting impression than the pony express.

This storied old highway was reached from Beatrice and other sections of Gage county mainly by the Brownville road. This branch of the overland trail crossed the Big Blue river at the old Market street ford; it then swung northward to the river, and, taking the course of the present highway to a point about two miles west of the Cub creek crossing, it left the creek and started on its course across the high prairie on what was known as Twenty- two Mile Ridge; it struck Little Sandy creek

river, near where the town of Alexandria is now located. Four miles above Hackney's was the Kiowa stage station ; six miles beyond the Kiowa was the Oak Grove ranch, located near the dreaded Narrows, a point on the Little Blue river where the prairies terminated abruptly in low, steep bluffs, forcing the travel on a narrow strip of land along the river bank. A little east of the Narrows was the ranch of the ill-fated Ubanks family. Comstock's ranch was a short distance above this pass, and be- yond Comstock's was the Little Blue stage sta- tion. Here the trail left the river and struck

ONE TYPE OF THE FAMOUS CONCORD STAGE-COACH

at Thomas Helvey's ranch, and a mile further on to the west, at Shumway's ranch, it inter- sected the main trail. Three miles west of Shumway's, at Patterson's ranch, Big Sandy was crossed, and the traveler entered the stir- ring scenes and pulsing life of the great na- tional highway.

At Big Sandy, besides Patterson's ranch, there were Slaughter's ranch, D. C. Jenkins' ranch, George Weisel's ranch, and some others. In addition to these there was a stage station, kept by Edward Farrell. From Farrell's sta- tion on the Big Sandy. the trail, a broad, smooth highway, led almost due west across Eighteen Mile Ridge, past Thompson's stage station, twelve miles out from Farrell's, to the great Hackney ranch, on the Little Blue

out across the Nine Mile Ridge. At Buffalo ranch it returned to the Little Blue and con- tinued up that stream eight miles to Pawnee ranch. Four miles beyond was Spring ranch, an overland stage station, where the trail climbed a long, steep hill to the high prairie, and led on to Thirty-two Mile Creek, a station located on a little stream of that name, eight miles southwest of the present city of Hastings. Fron Thirty-two Mile Creek it ran in a north- westerly direction through a collection of low, rounded sand hills to the Platte river bottom, where it intersected the Nebraska City branch of the trail at Hook's ranch, nine miles this way from Fort Kearney.

From almost any point in Gage county a market could be found for farm produce in two

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

or three days' travel, at the ranches and sta- tions along the old trail. Money was abun- dant, prices good, and the excitement, ro- mance, and thrilling adventure afforded by the trail was an added inducement to draw the pioneers and their sons to this traffic.

A person who now travels by rail or motors over country roads from any portion of south- eastern Nebraska to the site of old Fort Kear- ney, in the general direction held by the Ore- gon Trail or its branches, encounters evidence of wealth and refinement on every hand. He sees a succession of thriving cities and villages, connected by rail, telegraph, and telephone lines. Beautiful homes, smiling countrysides, and a happy, intelligent, and thriving popula- tion greet him on every hand. To such a trav- eler the condition of life which this same sec- tion of country presented along the old con- tinental cross-country highway from about 1850 to 1867 would be impossible of visualiza- tion. To the traveler in those heroic days the only signs of civilized life were the old high- way and its ever shifting kaleidoscopic popula- tion. The road itself constituted not the least wonderful of the objects which he encoun- tered. It led across the naked prairie from the Missouri river, - wide, hard, and bare. It fol- lowed no definite course, unless a generally northwesterly direction could be so designated. It crossed bridgeless streams, traversed locali- ties of great natural beauty and vast prairie meadows where millions of buffalo, elk, deer, and antelope found abundant pasturage dur- ing the greater portion of the year. On either side, stretching away in all directions, was the uninhabited and apparently limitless prairie. The few stage stations and ranches that marked its course served to emphasize the emptiness and desolation of the country through which it passed.

This great thoroughfare was traveled by as heterogeneous a mass of people as could be found anywhere in the world, - merchants, capitalists, freighters, prospectors, miners, hunters, trappers, traders, soldiers, Indians, emigrants, Mormons, gamblers, adventurers, pleasure-seekers, tourists, and the representa-

tives of foreign nations, - passing from east to west or from west to east, all in teeming, restless activity. From the top of a Concord stage-coach, drawn by three span of horses selected for this service on account of their speed and endurance, and rushing ahead on schedule time at the rate of ten or more miles per hour, pausing at the stations only long enough to change jaded for fresh teams, the traveler might go for days without being out of sight of long trains of huge wagons drawn slowly by from six to ten yoke of oxen or half as many mules.

The pioneers either hauled their produce to the ranches or stations on the trail or sold at home, at remunerative prices, to those who were regularly engaged in freighting along the trail. Among these were Samuel Jones and his son William R. Jones, Peter Hanna, John Dun- bar, Jefferson B. Weston, Joseph Saunders, David Kilpatrick, Nathan Blakely, William Blakely, Thomas and Joseph Kline, Volney Whitmore, George Whitmore, M. C. Butler, J. W. Kelly, Gilbert T. Loomis, Alvah Ayers, and many others whose names are not readily recalled. The ranches along the old trail were kept by a fearless class of frontiersmen, whose business it was to supply the freighters, sol- diers, stage-drivers, emigrants, and travelers with provender for their stock, and for them- selves food and drink, - quite often drink. Amongst the Gage county people who were en- gaged from time to time in the ranching and stage-driving business were Albert Holliday. who for many years kept the Hackney ranch ; Charles N. Emery, first a stage-driver and then a keeper of Pawnee and other ranches ; Jim Bainter ; "Big" Fred and "Little" Fred Roper; Joseph B. Roper; Joseph Milligan ; William E. Mudge; William Hess; Asa and John Latham; Robert Emery; Carl Emery ; John Gilbert; Ray Grayson; William Blakely. and George Hurlburt.

This storied highway is now a thing of the past. The part it played in the settlement and development of the great west may never be fully understood or rightly appreciated. Over the greater part of the distance traversed by it

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

there is left scarcely a trace. In a few years there will be none who could mark its course. But as long as men note and love the history of their country, this one fact must always re- main, - for nearly three score years, beginning with the Astorians in 1811, this great national thoroughfare, with its branches and ramifica- tions, was to the plains and Rocky mountain

regions of our country, the far west and north- west, what the Union Pacific Railroad, of which it was the precurser, became on its completion over half a century ago.

There are highways born, the old roads die - Can you read what once they said, From the way-worn ditch and the sunflower clump,

And the needs of folk long dead ? +

4 From Barbed Wire and Other Poems, by Edwin Ford Piper (1917).

CHAPTER XI

FIRST ACTUAL SETTLERS

OTOE AND MISSOURI TRIBES OF INDIANS - HISTORY - RESERVATION - RELATION OF PIO- NEERS TO INDIANS - PLANS TO SELL RESERVATION -- SALE - REPORT OF LEWIS AND CLARK - INDIAN VILLAGE - REMOVAL OF INDIAN TRIBES -

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History of Gage County, Nebraska; a narrative of the past, with special emphasis upon the pioneer period of the county's history, its social, commercial, educational, religious, and civic development from the early days to the present time, Part 10

Author: Dobbs, Hugh Jackson, 1849- Publication date: 1918 Publisher: Lincoln, Neb., Western Publishing and Engraving Company Number of Pages: 1120

Author: Dobbs, Hugh Jackson, 1849-
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Lincoln, Neb., Western Publishing and Engraving Company
Number of Pages: 1120