Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Sorted by date Results 76 - 100 of 120
March 12, 2011 marked the end of one of the most recent museum exhibits of Martha "Calamity" Jane Canary. According to www.bonjourparis.com, the exhibit featured "Calamity Jane and American Far West memorabilia, carefully organized to be understandable for French and English speakers and abundantly stocked with ancient photos, documents, films, antique western gear of the times and fact-packed letters addressed – but never sent – from Calamity to her daughter." The exhibit was featured at the...
Sheriff Felix Alston's handwritten account of his investigation ends abruptly with these words: "When court convened the prosecution decided to try Brink first. He was single, had no relatives in the County and very few if any influential friends." There is much left unsaid in these final words. Sheriff Alston had already obtained the full support of Judge Parmelee and Governor B. B. Brooks in the prosecution of the seven men that he suspected were involved in the raid and killings at Spring Cre...
In 1909 Felix Alston was the Sheriff in Big Horn County, Wyoming. Four years before his death in 1956 at the age of 87, Former Sheriff Alston began a handwritten manuscript detailing his investigation of the Ten Sleep murder, known also as The Spring Creek Raid. The manuscript titled "The Tensleep Raiders," along with several of Mr. Alston's personal effects, has recently been donated to the Wyoming State Museum in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Sheriff Alston's firsthand account gives us a glimpse into...
Ten Sleep, Wyoming, is situated in the western foothills of the Big Horn Mountains near a tiny tributary of the Bighorn River named Spring Creek. Little more than a couple of dozen miles due east of Worland, Wyoming the Spring Creek area was designated as sheep range in the 1890s by an agreed upon imaginary boundary called a "deadline." From the deadline, cattlemen grazed their herds to the west, sheep men tended their flocks to the east and serious consequences lay in store for sheep men who...
In the archives of the Texas Trail Museum in Pine Bluffs, Wyoming I came across a file labeled, "Cook, Dave." In the file are several copies of hand written documents written by David F. Cook of Cheyenne, Wyoming. One document containing seven neatly written pages is titled, "Early Day Ranches Cheyenne Vicinity" at the top of page one, in a different hand, is written, "Uncle Dave wrote this Feb 1991." Nowhere in the documents does it tell of Uncle Dave's age in 1991 but the cursive writing is...
In 1867 the Kansas Pacific Railway was planning a route for the railroad that would take it through the southern regions of Colorado. William Jackson Palmer, who led the survey crew, discovered large veins of coal that lay close to the surface and provided relatively easy access for mining operations. The expansion of rail transportation across the continent made those coal deposits a valuable natural resource and Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) quickly seized the opportunity for...
On January 12, 1909 Mr. Robert Harvey, chairman of the committee on marking historic sites, presented his report at the annual conference of the Nebraska State Historical Society. Among the many sites that he requested to be recognized and memorialized with an appropriate monument was the location of the assumed but unconfirmed massacre of the Nelson Buck survey party. Official records of the U.S. military at Fort Kearney and Fort McPherson indicate that of the ten members of the survey party...
It was late May, 1873 when LeRoy Dick, appointed officer for the township of Osage, Kansas, along with an organized group of 75 men from Montgomery and Labette counties descended the surrounding hills to the Bender homestead. The Bender Inn had been abandoned for several days and nearly all merchandise, household goods and possessions had been removed. Officer Dick gathered up a few remaining items that might provide clues or perhaps evidence of what had happened inside the four walls of the 16...
In 1850 more than 35,000 seekers of fortune converged on the "Queen City of the Trails," known as Independence, Missouri. The glitter of gold had sparked a fever across the continent that could only be cured by going west, to California. The year before, 1849, had seen more than 30,000 pioneers load their wagons, yoke their teams and strike off on a journey that would take nearly five months to cover more than 1,700 miles. It was a journey filled with hardship, disappointment, excruciating...
Among the many causes of casualties that afflicted the flood of immigrants along the California, Oregon and Mormon trails, death by the so-called "savages of the plains" rank as the least deadly. In fact, it is said that the nearly 350,000 pioneers from 1841 to 1866 would have had a greater risk of accidental or premature death if they had stayed at home than at the hands of Indians. History tends to treat the brutal deaths of helpless travelers with far greater journalistic sensationalism than...
In the early 1930s, Idaho farmer William Beard was clearing a field in Tetonia, Idaho, just west of the Teton Mountain Range. While working the field William unearthed a rock of rhyolite lava in the shape of the profile of a man's head. The stone, 13 inches long, 8 inches wide and about 4 inches thick, is carved with the name "John Colter" on one side and the date "1808" on the other. It is possible that the Colter Stone may well be a piece of rock graffiti carved by John Colter himself....
Phantly Roy Bean Jr., more popularly known as Judge Roy Bean, was born sometime around 1825 in Mason County, Kentucky. Roy was the youngest of five siblings who were raised in poverty by Roy Sr. and his wife Anna. At around 16 years of age, Roy left home on a flatboat bound for New Orleans with the hopes of finding work. But it seems that Roy Jr. was more adept at finding trouble than finding work. Or perhaps it was more often that trouble found Roy. At any rate, New Orleans proved to be a...
"Woke up one mornin' on the Old Chisholm Trail, with a rope in my hand an' a cow by the tail ... come-a ti yi yippy yippy yay ..." And so goes another of the hundreds, some say a thousand, verses that tell about the troubles on the old Chisholm Trail. Jesse Chisholm was of Scottish and Cherokee parentage and likely never heard the trail that he blazed called The Chisholm Trail. Like Thomas Fitzpatrick, who is credited with discovering South Pass, Jesse Chisholm merely recognized the presence of...
Word of the brutal hangings of Black Foot and Two Face by Colonel Moonlight and the captivity of their bands quickly reached the Sioux leaders, who continued to wage war against the increasing white encroachment of Sioux lands. Warriors under the leadership of Crazy Horse, Spotted Tail and Red Cloud prepared themselves for battle and headed south to intercept Captain Fouts and the 135 troopers of the 7th Iowa Cavalry. Between the time of Captain Fouts departure with the 1,500 Sioux captives on J...
Not many miles east of the Nebraska-Wyoming border, where the North Platte River crosses that boundary, a tiny Wyoming-born tributary takes a sharp turn north in the final leg of its eastward journey. The water that flows through this draw, named Horse Creek, empties into the Platte and joins with the waters of that wide and shallow river until it reaches the waters of the Missouri. It was in this area on September 17, 1851 that the Fort Laramie Treaty was signed. The gathering of more than...
The following is an abbreviated retelling of John Clay's book "A Sheepherder's Grave" Joseph Arthur was an Englishman and a farmer whose meager landholdings lay at the foot of the Cheviot Hills. The farm was a good one, with grassy meadows where cattle grazed and sheep drifted in woolen white dots on emerald hills. The land was rich and fertile and turned up black as coal dust behind the plow. Like many dwellings in the English countryside Joseph's home was already ancient when he was born, but...
According to the records of the U.S. Surveyor General's Office in Plattsmouth, Nebraska on January 20th, 1885 the entire Nebraska Panhandle consisted of only four counties. The southern half of the Panhandle was Cheyenne County and the northern half was divided into three counties of fairly equal size being Sioux, Dawes and Sheridan Counties. Eventually Cheyenne County would be split into seven smaller counties that now include Banner, Deuel, Garden, Morrill, Kimball and Scotts Bluff Counties. S...
December 21, 1866: eighty troopers and Capt. William J. Fetterman lay dead on a battlefield a few miles from Ft. Phil Kearny, Wyoming. Capt. Fetterman's disregard for the orders of his commanding officer, Col. Henry B. Carrington, to rescue the wood gathering party that was under attack and not engage or pursue the enemy, resulted in the detachment riding into an ambush of over a thousand Sioux under the leadership of Red Cloud. Women and children at the fort were hurriedly escorted into the...
A dozen, dozen years ago in the Moon When the Snow Drifts into the Tepees (January) of 1870 on the 23rd day of that month it was 40 degrees below zero in northwestern Montana Territory. On that bitterly cold morning, the Piegan chief, Heavy Runner, and his band of Blackfeet families were in winter camp on the banks of the Marias River, about sixty miles due north of Fort Shaw. Earlier in that month Major Eugene Baker had left Fort Ellis, near Bozeman, and began a march of nearly 150 miles to...
The Great Sioux War of 1876-1877 was begun by an edict of the United States government in December of 1875. It was demanded that all of the tribes of the Cheyenne and Sioux nations that were then off their respective reservations must return no later than the 31st of January 1876. Failure to obey this command would classify the deserters as hostile enemies of the United States, to be relentlessly pursued and summarily punished. Runners from various agencies were sent out to notify those bands...
I suppose that every generation has their own historic blizzard and the stories that come from it. I remember a winter in northeast Kansas, I think it was the winter of '58-'59. The storm lasted only a couple of days but winds built drifts that reached the eaves of the barn. Dad and I dug tunnels in the drifts so we could open the barn door. During the two days of snow and wind the cattle had worn a path through the snow, from the barn to the tank, as it piled deeper and deeper. After the...
Long before scholars of the written language began to record the history of the Great Plains there was the oral history of the Native Americans who roamed the region. Pawnee legend tells of a young brave who captured many fine horses in the area now known as the Pumpkin Creek Valley. In similar oral traditions the Min-ne-con-jou Sioux tell of a long ago leader, Lone Horn, who was the first of all the Sioux to bring his band of followers to the Platte River Valley. It is told that he did not...
This Christmas I would like to share a few Christmas poems that I have written over the years. I hope that they might bring a smile to your face and perhaps light a spark of that good old Christmas Spirit in your heart. Many Years ago we had a Christmas tree that was a misshapen cedar that Dad had cut out of a fencerow along the county road. It definitely was not a perfect tree by any stretch of the imagination. Most times our Christmas tree came out of the pasture and Dad would pick out whichever one might look best that year. Store-bought...
As the unofficial historian in the family, one would think that I should keep a detailed journal of all family events. Unfortunately I do not. I had a great-aunt Lydia who did just that and her records of family gatherings contain details that most folks would think were unnecessary. Her written accounts of weddings describe the bride's gown, the groom's suit, the cake, wedding colors and decorations, who was in attendance, the weather, the food and even the make and model of the car that the...
While much of history records this warrior's name as Mochi, the tribal documents of the Southern Cheyenne list the name as Moc-chi. Moc-chi was not born to be a warrior and was not trained in the ways of a warrior as a youth in the Tse Tse Stus band of Southern Cheyenne. Born in 1841, Moc-chi was 23 years of age before ever taking the path of war against an enemy. In a culture where young boys began their training for combat at a very early age, it was not uncommon among the Cheyenne for the war...
