Across the Fence: New eyes on the Panhandle

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. Sheridan and Sioux Counties retained their original boundaries but Dawes County split off its southern one-third to establish Box Butte County. And of course before the settlers, soldiers and surveyors ventured into this part of the Great Plains it was a part of the Louisiana Territory-though in truth it was actually the homeland of the Plains Indians.

The Panhandle encompasses an area 100 miles wide and 125 miles long. The eleven counties combined cover 14,180 square miles, nearly 20 percent of the entire state. But with little more than 90-thousand souls, we Panhandlers are only a mere 5 percent of the state's total population. Our one-fifth of the state has only seven cities of notable size, but a multitude of small towns and villages that dot the edges of ancient waterways, historic trails, early railroads and modern highways.

In the southern part of the Panhandle, Lodgepole Creek meanders in from the Laramie Peaks of Wyoming and runs westward until it dips into Colorado at the southeast corner. The longest creek in the continental United States, Lodgepole Creek was always a well-traveled route for nomadic plains tribes. Later, John C. Fremont and his crew explored this region and camped along the banks of the Lodgepole at places we now call Sidney, Kimball and Pine Bluffs. This land route was so strategic that it was used by early trappers and traders, overland stages and freighters, countless columns of U.S. Cavalry and the first transcontinental railroad and highway.

Through the southern Panhandle, fingers of the Western Trail stretched northward as Texas cowboys pushed Longhorn cattle to the northern ranges of Nebraska and the Dakotas and to the agencies of Red Cloud, Sitting Bull and others. Nebraska's largest cattle empire, The Bay State Livestock Company, covered the entire southwest quarter of early Cheyenne County and other smaller but no less important ranches operating further to the east. To the north were the ranches of the Coad brothers, Bartlett Richards, the Modisett and others of equal enterprise and fame.

North of the Lodgepole runs another smaller creek known as Pumpkin Creek that winds its way eastward at the foot of a line of pine covered bluffs known as The Wildcat Hills. There are several passes over these sandstone barricades to the Platte River Valley that lies beyond but perhaps the most well known follows the path of the old stage route of the Sidney to Deadwood, known as Stage Hill Road. This gateway over the Wildcats presents a view of vast prairies and towering sandstone buttes that can rival most any panoramic vista found on the plains.

Some say that the name 'Nebraska' comes from Native American words that mean "Flat Water," which would of course refer to our remarkable North Platte River. The history of the west unfolded along this river where thousands upon thousands traveled westward on the California, Oregon and Mormon Trails. Stories of hardship and disaster, triumph and courage mark mile after mile of these historic trails.

Known as the longest graveyard, the Oregon Trail is bordered by unmarked graves, the final resting place of thousands of men, women and children who were laid to rest beneath the sod of windswept prairie grasses. As emigrant wagon trains traveled westward along the Platte and entered the Panhandle region, they were met with the grandeur of the majestic bluffs that had been formed by wind and water as nature carved the valley. Court House and Jail Rock silhouetted in the south, Chimney Rock's towering spire ahead and in the far distance Scotts Bluff, Five Rocks and a host of other natural castles and cathedrals quickened the heartbeats of those who had endured weeks of monotonous travel on expanses of a prairie without horizons.

The badlands between the bluffs and the river were impassable and so the route passed through the bluffs and on to the Laramie Peaks. Wagon wheel ruts still mark the path.

Beyond the Platte River to the north lie the buttes, the badlands and the pine covered ridges of the northern Panhandle. Among the canyons and creeks of this rugged country live the spirits of the Cheyenne and the Sioux. This is the land of soldiers and chiefs where Native struggles to survive clashed with white struggles to conquer. Here is the land of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, Dull Knife and Little Wolf. War Bonnet Creek in northern Sioux County is named for the site where Buffalo Bill Cody matched bravado and revenge with Yellow Hand and took his one and only scalp to avenge the death of Custer and the defeat of the 7th Cavalry.

Straddling the north/south borders of Sioux and Dawes Counties, Fort Robinson still stands against the rugged bluffs that rise to the north. Through the canyons and pine forests surrounding the fort Dull Knife and his people tried in vain to escape their imprisonment. It was at Fort Robinson where members of the tribal police killed Crazy Horse, after his surrender and in this region of the northern Panhandle were the agencies of Spotted Tail, and Red Cloud.

In northern Dawes County, Chadron and the surrounding area remembers the early fur trading days and the French/Canadian trappers and traders who settled that country. Descendants of families who settled near Rushville remember the stories of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show that picked up the Lakota men and women who joined the show at the Rushville depot. Among those who waited there for the train was Sitting Bull. Also remembered are the stories of the hordes of reporters who waited anxiously in Rushville for news of the Ghost Dance that culminated in the massacre at Wounded Knee.

Sometimes it takes someone who sees the Panhandle with new eyes to remind us of the many breathtakingly beautiful, and historically significant locations throughout the Panhandle. This past weekend I attended a seminar in Gering that was conducted by a lady that had flown in from upstate New York. At least three different times during the day she told us how awesome it was to see the wide-open expanse of prairie and the beauty of the Wildcat Hills and surrounding bluffs. She told us that she had stopped to videotape the scene, forwarding the clips to her husband and exclaiming how thrilling it was to see Nebraska for the first time. Hers were new eyes taking in the surrounding beauty that we see every day and begin to take for granted.

The Nebraska Panhandle boasts the Great Platte River and the Niobrara, Lodgepole and Pumpkin Creeks, the Wildcat Hills and the haunting beauty of the Pine Ridge. Along these waterways and vast plains range antelope, elk, deer and moose. Mountain lions roam the Pine Ridge country, eagles soar overhead and coyotes scavenge for meals through rock-strewn canyons. We have bluffs and buttes in magnificent formations seen nowhere else on earth. The Panhandle encompasses the wonder of the Sandhills, the otherworldly landscape of Toadstool Park and the baffling mystery of the Hudson-Meng Bison Kill Site. We have the legends of heroes and villains like Doc Middleton and Buffalo Bill. We have the Oregon Trail, the Sidney to Deadwood Trail, the Pony Express and the Great Western cattle trail. The Panhandle has witnessed the Indian Wars and the Range Wars, cattle barons and railroad tycoons, homesteaders and grangers and those just passing through to gold fields in the Dakotas and the promised land called California.

The Nebraska Panhandle is wide-open prairies and breathtaking sunsets, dust storms and blizzards and hordes of tumbleweeds driven by relentless winds. Our corner of Nebraska is home to treaty sites and battlegrounds, forgotten cemeteries and buried secrets that whisper clues from hidden canyons. We are cattlemen and cowboys, growers of wheat and corn, beets and beans. We are doctors and lawyers, students and teachers, bankers and bakers, dreamers and doers. We are pioneers still and keepers of the spirit that lingers here and makes the Nebraska Panhandle a place like no other.

It is said that the Valley of the Nile was the cradle of civilization and perhaps the Great Platte River Valley is the cradle of the west. Here our ancestors have watched this ever-changing landscape emerge from the depths of an inland sea and transform itself from tropical forest to bison covered plains. One would be hard pressed to call this place a paradise for its rugged past has chiseled out a rugged people. But all too often we push forward with heads down, bucking the wind as we forge ahead and we forget to lift our heads and look around with new eyes.

M. Timothy Nolting is an award winning Nebraska columnist and freelance writer. To contact Tim, email; [email protected]