Sidney: A colorful past leading to a prosperous future

Second in a series . . .

Cheyenne County was carved out of a larger previously established county by the name of Shorter County in 1870 with Fort Sidney as the county seat and took up about half the Nebraskan panhandle.

Established originally by soldiers and railroad workers Sidney saw its first real boom in the late 1870s and early 1880s.

During this time, Sidney’s first recorded “hay day,” it truly was a Wild West town with lynching, outlaws, brothels, saloons, gambling and a murder rate that would amaze people these days.

Fort Sidney’s rapid growth was due to the location of the railroad, making it a major hub for transport of people and supplies going and coming through the Midwest during the Black Hills gold rush.

Then once the bridge over North Platte River was built, with the help of Sidney businessmen, travel was made both easier and in some cases cheaper via stagecoach.

By the late 1870s Fort Sidney had many freight lines and stage coaches running through it, carrying valuable cargo from miners in the Black Hills and cargo consisting of supplies and gold.

These kinds of valued goods coupled with the less than desirable reputation Fort Sidney had gained made the town a key place for bandits to plant roots.

Murder and robbery became such frequent happenings in Fort Sidney during this time it is said eventually the Union Pacific refused to allow passengers to leave the train as it passed through and often locked the doors as they neared the area.

The increased robbery of freight lines from the Black Hills to Sidney or from Sidney to Omaha prompted the Union Pacific to place officers on each train car in 1882.

The officers were instructed to arrest and deliver any suspicious characters along the route to the law.

So treacherous was the area in the early 1880s that just outside of Sidney the largest gold heist in the United States took place, in today’s market it would be an estimated total of about $5 million.

But if the crimes of robbery and heists weren’t enough to make good law abiding citizens dislike the rampant acts of violence taking place around and within their town the flagrant murders often taking place in gambling houses and saloons would be.

As legend has it, one night in one of Fort Sidney’s many dance halls a man was shot to death and instead of the murder stopping the fun of the evening it seemed to escalate the frenzied atmosphere.

According to Nebraskan History, by the end of the night it took another two murders and the bodies being “propped up against the wall” for all to gawk at, before the dancers opted to put an end to the evening’s festivities; just three more bodies to add to the infamous cemetery.

It has been said during the worst of times in Fort Sidney the law had very little to do with the punishments handed down to criminals and quite often were said to be just as criminalized as the men and women committing crimes.

The outcome of the increased violence and crime within Fort Sidney was the development of a vigilantly group of men who called themselves the “Regulators.”

The group was made up of respectable residents, many of which were business owners, whom were weary of the decline in the quality of life the undesirables brought.

From the many lynching, murders and natural causes of death one of the west’s most famous cemeteries was born; Boot Hill.

Boot Hill received its name because so many of its buried, died still wearing their boots.

This cemetery would become the last resting place of more than 200 people; though not all the bodies are in the modern day Boot Hill cemetery on Elm Street.

Granted, not all the 200 people were criminals but many of the bodies buried in the cemetery were examples of the intolerance of the residents towards the outlaws who had invaded their town.

The “Regulators” issued a warning to the criminal element of Fort Sidney, letting them know that if they did not leave town within the allotted time they would be next to be hung.

To prove the seriousness of their threats and how fed up the town had become, the men moved lynching outlaws from telegraph poles to a tree on the court house lawn that had “grown strong enough to handle a grown man’s weight.”

In April of 1881 Watson McDonald was the first to be hung by his neck from the tree for all, citizens and outlaw alike to see as a warning.

Needless to say once the lynchings began and outlaws understood how serious the townfolk were, they made the wise choice of leaving the area in the dust of their horses.

It is rumored that many a famous outlaw made their way through old Fort Sidney. Well-known outlaws such as Butch Cassidy, Wild Bill Hickok, Doc Middleton and the likes of Buffalo Bill, to name a few, came through quite often during the early years to visit Calamity Jane, who had made Fort Sidney a home for a short period of time.

Between its criminal element and threats of Native American uprisings, Sidney saw quite a few ill-fated nights and days that would last more than 15 years and fill the cemetery full of bodies.

It is said that in 1878 the last warning alarm for danger due to Native Americans was issued.

A peace of sorts with the Native American Nations would fall about the area or rather the threat was not as eminent as it had been in the past and Fort Sidney’s Soldiers would be called away, closing the Fort, for the time being.

To be continued…..

Editor’s note: This article was written from many different, but very reliable, historical sources. The collection of history comes from sources such as The City of Sidney, The University of Nebraska, Nebraska Government, The Nebraska Historical Society and the Cheyenne County Historical Society’s websites.