Across The Fence: Discovery of the three-toed horse in Nebraska

Throughout the world, there is likely no single animal more honored and admired than the horse. The most ancient of Asian civilizations revered the horse for its strength, courage and intelligence.

In North America, it was thought that the horse had been introduced by Spanish explorers and that before that time there were no horses on the continent. In the mid-19th Century, the man who knew more about horses than any other was Professor Othniel Charles Marsh of Yale University.

When Thomas Huxley, one of Darwin's strongest supporters, viewed Marsh's display of equus fossils, that showed the evolution of the horse from the tiny, fox-sized three-toed specimen to the giant Clydesdale with dinner plate sized hooves, he remarked that it was, "The most wonderful thing I ever saw!"

Marsh had found and studied the prehistoric horse in Asia and Europe but believed that the species had originated on the North American continent and had migrated on a path called The Great North Trail. This trail led across a great basin, (The Platte River Valley) up the Rocky Mountain range then westward to Asia and Europe over a land bridge now known as the Bering Strait.

In 1868, Marsh found proof of existence of the three-toed horse in the Platte River Valley and began a search across the region that would eventually unearth the fossil record of the evolution and eventual extinction of the early horse on the North American continent.

The beginning of that search came about quite by accident. Marsh was in Chicago attending a scientific convention when local newspapers carried an account of some strange, unidentifiable bones that had been dug up by a well digger along the route of the Union Pacific Railroad near the Nebraska-Wyoming border. Marsh had planned a vacation to Canada and was due to depart when a friend offered to cover the expenses to the site where the unusual bones had been found. Marsh promptly forgot about Canada and left Chicago on the next westbound Union Pacific.

When Marsh arrived at the site of the recently dug well he discovered, to his great disappointment, that the location was not a regular stop on the Union Pacific line. The conductor was reluctant to make a stop. However, Marsh was determined not to be deterred, threatening the conductor with dire consequences should his friend, General Snider, the head of the Union Pacific, hear of the conductors refusal to stop the train.

The conductor grudgingly agreed to a brief stop of five minutes. The station was little more than a boxcar, lifted from its wheels and placed alongside the tracks as a depot. There was a store built of crudely hewn logs and a few ramshackle sheds set on the prairie beside a small stream named Lodgepole Creek. Marsh quickly found the pile of dirt and bone fragments alongside the recently dug well. It was a large heap of powdery white dirt littered with numerous bones. Most of the relics of fossilized bone were splintered fragments but to his delight, he retrieved a portion of his long-suspected, but as yet undiscovered, three-toed horse. He named the specimen on the spot, Equus Parvulus.

Later, Marsh would describe the find as belonging to a prehistoric horse that was, "...scarcely a yard in height, each of his slender legs was terminated by three toes."

Marsh continued to dig frantically at the pile of dirt and bones as the engineer repeatedly blew the train's whistle for departure. He signaled for the train to wait, desperately wanting more time to sift through the dirt and fragments of bone. After a short while, fellow passengers became impatient, shouting for Marsh to get back on board and coaxing the conductor to get underway.

As the engine chugged forward, wheels squealing on the rails, black smoke billowing from its stack and steam pulsing from the drive cylinders, Marsh dug frantically at the pile. As the train pulled away, he stuffed his Equus bones in his pockets and shoved the shinbone of an ancient camel under his arm as he ran to catch the railing of the last car. In all, Marsh spent less than 30 minutes at that remote and primitive Union Pacific station.

Another, less dramatic version of the story is found in the archives of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. According to documents there, O.C. Marsh had been in attendance at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago. Afterwards, Marsh joined an excursion to Omaha, and then proceeded westward to where the Union Pacific Railroad, still under construction, had reached its westernmost advance about 60 miles west of Benton, Wyo. The excursion reached the end of completed rails on Aug. 17, 1868.

That "end-of-track" location would have been at a point near the present-day town of Elk Mountain, Wyo. The records do not relate that the excursion train had passed through Benton in the peak of its wild and lawless existence. If an historical marker were placed at the Benton town site it would read: Benton, Wyoming: Est. July 1868 Abandoned: September 1868.

According to the Yale archives, during the excursion, Marsh was able to convince the Union Pacific crew to make a brief unscheduled stop, where recent reports had indicated that fossilized human remains had been found during the digging of a well. Marsh realized that the fossils were not human but those of prehistoric mammals. Marsh is said to have asked the station agent to collect some of the fossils and he would pick them up on the return trip. When the expedition returned, Marsh was given a hat full of bones.

Whether the discovery was a frantic digging for bones in a pile of dirt as the train pulled away or the casual delivery of a hat full of bones, that might have been the end of Marsh's expeditions in the heart of the Great Plains but in fact, it was only the beginning. Professor Marsh led four consecutive scientific expeditions that covered extensive territory in Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming and South Dakota. In 1870, 1871, 1872 and 1873, Marsh and his students at Yale University traveled west in search of the fossilized remains of plants, fish, reptiles and mammals that had, until then, not been known to have inhabited the Platte River basin and surrounding regions.

The 1870 expedition began at Fort McPherson and under orders issued by Gen. William T. Sherman, was accompanied by the 5th Cavalry and guided by frontier scouts William F. Cody and Major Frank North along with his famous Pawnee scouts. Among the 11 students who accompanied Marsh was George Bird Grinnell who would become a well-known and respected historian of the west.

The expedition went north from Fort McPherson into the Sandhills along the Loup Fork River to its headwaters then back to the Platte. During this portion of the expedition they found the fossilized remains of 6 different species of prehistoric horses, two kinds of rhinoceroses, and numerous other extinct animal species.

The second leg of this first expedition began at Fort D.A. Russell and extended south into Colorado where the fossils of giant turtles were found along with other extinct species of rhinoceroses, birds, and rodents. Most important to the expedition was the discovery of Brontotheres, a species of rhinoceroses more closely related to the horse. Heading back north the expedition followed Lodgepole Creek east past Pine Bluffs before striking off towards Scotts Bluff where they followed the Platte west to Horse Creek then southwesterly back to Fort Russell.

Marsh's extensive study of the horse provided scientific evidence that the horse originated in the Platte River Valley on the Central Great Plains and migrated northwest to Europe, before becoming extinct on the North American continent. The plains did not then see another horse, for untold centuries, until Spaniards brought the Mustang.

For the rest of his life, Marsh's primary research was the paleontological exploration of the west along the Great North Trail. His discovery and documentation of the three-toed horse proved the evolutionary process of natural adaptation as the horse grew in stature, eventually lost the two outside toes and developed a single hoof. His exploration and many 'digs' also resulted in the discovery of 80 different species of prehistoric dinosaurs. His research took him to Sioux country in Western Nebraska and the Black Hills of Dakota Territory where he also became well acquainted with the Lakota chief Red Cloud.

Perhaps largely unknown is that the first fossilized evidence of the three toed horse, which Marsh found in the pile of debris from a well dug near the Union Pacific Railroad and named Equus Parvulus, was at a place called Antelope Station.

Eventually that station, which was not a regular stop, became a rough and rowdy cow town called Antelopeville, so named because of the large herds of Antelope that grazed across the prairie. After the heyday of the cowboy, when the open range became settled with farmers and businessmen and the little town of Antelopeville grew, it was renamed after an official of the Union Pacific.

Today, the town is known as Kimball, Neb.

M. Timothy Nolting is an award-winning Nebraska columnist and freelance writer. Contact Tim via email at [email protected]