← Before Today: A History of Holt County, Nebraska
Free Homes For The Millions— And Water Chapter Twelve Although Holt County seemingly has numerous rivers and streams, only a small amount of water enters the county as stream flow— small, that is, when compared to the immense reservoirs of ground water underlying its surface. The distance to the underground water ranges from less than five feet in the bottom lands to one hundred and fifty feet, or more, in the uplands.
While these never failing streams were valuable in many ways to the early settlers along their banks, irrigation was not one of their uses, not at first anyway. During the late ‘seven-ties and throughout the ‘eighties rainfall in the region was fairly abundant and the pioneers raised good crops, cut and sold large quantities of hay and generally prospered, even on the dryer upland areas. As has already been noted, immigration was heavy during those years, and much of this was due to the efforts of one man, John Ross Buchanan, general passenger agent for the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley railroad (now the Northwestern). This railroad, unlike the other major lines that built across the prairie states, received no land grants to aid in its construction. In the interests of self perpetuation it was forced to develop its own region. Consequently Buchanan saturated the East with alluring advertising designed to bring hordes of settlers into the country served by his railroad. “FREE HOMES FOR THE MILLIONS! That was my slogan,” the agent stated, “and it headed every circular, folder and poster which I issued, and I issued them by the million. I spread them over Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, even New York and Pennsylvania. Everywhere and in every possible publication and newspaper, printed in black, blue and red ink, in the English and German languages— FREE HOMES FOR THE MILLIONS.” The settlers who followed the lure to Holt County wrote home about the “salubrious climate, the rich, nutritious grasses, the thousands of pure crystal springs, artesian wells, cattle wintered with little grain, prizes won on exhibits of vegetables and grain at the State Fair, thirty-five bushel wheat and other grains in proportion and, finally, the bright prospects of a sugar beet industry.” After Congressman Kinkaid got his bill enacted into law, the O’Neill land office, on June 28, 1904, was Pulling the ditch plow. Courtesy Clay Johnson, Jr. collection besieged by its last great army of prospective settlers, thus completing the saga of the settlement of the county.
Until the advent of the ‘nineties all had gone fairly well with the earliest settlers. Then the yearly rainfall began to slack off. In ’92 it was quite short. In ’93 it was even shorter and in ’94 there was practically none at all. In the fall of ’92 the farmers, sadly aware of nearly empty granaries and burned up pastures, began to talk of irrigation. Merchants and bankers, who also suffer when the farmers have no money, joined them in looking into the possibilities of irrigation. The people around Emmet were the first to make a serious attempt to put water on the baked fields. In April of 1893 the newly organized Elkhorn Irrigation Company began digging its 102 irrigation canal which “proposed taking water out of the Elkhorn River at or near the town of Emmet and bringing it down along the south side of the river skirting the bluffs to a point south of O’Neill, then bearing off in a southerly direction. The length of this ditch will be about ten miles.” It was estimated that some 12,000 acres could be irrigated at a cost of $10,000.
Work on the project began immediately, and continued in dead earnest all that dry, wind-parched summer. A ditch plow, pulled on its slow and tortous way by twenty-two horses, was used to construct the canal. By the onset of winter the ditch was done.
At the same time a much more grandoise undertaking was under way for the northern section of the county. Originally titled the Niobrara River Power and Irrigation Company, the new organization proposed to take water from the Niobrara and Snake Rivers for the irrigation of 100,000 acres of land in Holt, Rock and Brown counties.
The July 27, 1893 issue of the Frontier carried a long and verbose feature directed to “The People of Nebraska and Especially Holt County,” urging them to get behind irrigation. The writer based his convictions on what he had seen “in all the states where irrigation is employed.” He described irrigation in Idaho and California, where deserts had been reclaimed. He dwelt on the “Death Desert” of Fresno, California, where formerly a snake could not live nor a swallow fly across it. But irrigation had lifted the “death cloth” from the face of the desert, transforming it into a beautiful and productive land. The people of Nebraska could do likewise, he declared, “but (they) are not abreast of the times . . . ask the farmer what he thinks and he will tell you that it cannot be made a success . . . he will say the water will sink into the ground” and never reach the major portions of the fields.” While Emmer farmers were digging their ditches the northern company was attempting to get under way. T. V. Golden, the prime mover in the project, was busy interesting eastern capitalists in the project. The dry, open winter of 1893-94 and the extremely dry summer of 1894 gave impetus to the move, especially the furnas winds that blew from the south in July, whitening the struggling scanty grain crops and baking the earth until it cracked.
Through the pages of the Frontier of August 2 Golden called a meeting of all the people interested in the Niobrara River project and reported that Mr. Kerr, the gentleman representing an association of eastern capitalists, who has been in correspondence with T. V. Golden, secretary, . . . with the view of furnishing the capital necessary for the construe-, tion of the company’s big ditch, arrived in O’Neill Sunday evening, and Monday afternoon, accompanied by Mr. Golden and Jack Meals, proceded to drive over the route (of the proposed ditch.) The meeting was called for August 6, at the courthouse. A large crowd showed up and Kerr, the “gentleman from New York,” explained the project in careful detail, dealing mostly with plans for financing same. The company would do this by bond issues, he explained, and Holt’s share would be $1,266,000. Moses Kinkaid was elected president and the ditch route from Cherry County to Antelope County was laid out.
In his Golden Jubilee edition of the Frontier Saunders, fifty-five years later, observes that the “gentleman from New York” may have been from as far east as Sioux City and was interested principally in the proposed bond issue. In the course of subsequent meetings Kerr continued to lay new and enlarged plans before the people, who did not seem too receptive to any of them. Arrangements went ahead, however, and agreements for the sale of water rights and the rates thereof, were drawn up. Some were even sold before the beginning of the year 1895, when surveying for the ditch was to begin, “as soon as the weather was fit.” The survey was to be finished by the time the frost had gone out of the ground and actual work on the ditch could be initiated. In the meantime the Elkhorn Ditch people were having troubles. Some of the farmers through whose farms the ditch had been dug were suing the ditch company for damages. The Frontier found this hard to understand. “For if the ditch is not a benefit it is nothing, and to construct it would be the height of foolishness,” the editor stated. But it was already dug and that spring water was to be turned in and channeled to the drouth cracked fields along its route. When the big day came a great crowd was on hand to watch the miracle. Even a group of cowboys showed up with the intention of racing the water to the end of the canal. The cowboys won easily— for the water, true to the forecast of farmers the year before— sank into the sandy soil and never reached the end of the canal, or many of the thirsty fields.
The water did, however, reach the nearer fields between Emmet and O’Neill, aiding materially in the production of chicory and some sugar beets in the summers of 1894 and ’95. The following year a flood washed out everything but the irrigation ditch— which was never used again.
Remains of the old ditch are still visible southwest of O’Neill.
New troubles soon arose to plague the northern company, which had by then become the Golden Irigation District. The Wright law, or Irrigation Act, of 1895 had brought about a test case in the courts of California and, since the organization of the California District had been similar to that of the Nebraska District, it was deemed best to hold up everything until the case was decided. While the delay was in effect still another company, the “Progress Irrigation and Colonization Society,” with an organized capital of $20,000 came into being, prepared to develop irrigation in any part of the county where it was practicable.
By the end of 1896 the validity of the Wright Act had been upheld by the United States Supreme Court and work on the Golden canal was to begin in January, 1897. Thirteen men were to be put into the field (their expenses paid by a three mill levy on the property of the district) to begin the long postponed survey. After all the delays and disappointments, construction work on the big ditch actually began that spring— but before much had been accomplished some engineers, belatedly engaged to analyze the project, reported that there was “not sufficient water available to irrigate the entire district and to justify the construction of the ditch.” It was also found that, here too, the sandy soil would absorb the water before it reached the lands it was to irrigate.
But by then good rains had come again to Holt County, beginning with 1895 and continuing through most of the next thirty-five years, and the people had lost interest in such projects as expensive irrigation ditches.
While the severe drouth of the nineties lasted, rainmakers enjoyed a hey day. The populace, desperate over their burned fields, drying streams and hungry livestock, were willing to try anything that held out even a faint hope of relief. There was, supposedly, some basis for the belief that powerful explosions precipitated rain. During the late Civil War it had been noted that big rains immediately followed most of the war’s major battles. Consequently, scientists deduced, the explosion of a huge quantity of dynamite might so disturb the upper air as to cause it to condense into clouds and rain. For a sum large enough to cover the cost of 103 the dynamite and provide a profit, various outfits traversed the drouth stricken land and offered to make it rain.
Although rainfall had been very short in the O’Neill area through May and June of 1893, the Frontier of July 6 was not yet ready to admit a real drouth was in progress. When the Bonesteel, South Dakota News printed the following: “It is reported that a carload of dynamite was exploded at O’Neill Monday last as a rain producer, and immediately a big black cloud accumulated about four hundred miles northwest and floated off down the Missouri River towards the Gulf of Mexico where, we presume, it rained.” The Frontier, after reprinting the item, retorted, “Strange how reports originate. True, O’Neill has a ton of dynamite to experiment with if a drouth should settle down among us, but the amount exploded up to date is confined to the small bomb Ed Grady and Jake Hershiser touched off to honor the great Columbian celebration (Fourth of July) last Tuesday.” *”A Piece of Emerald,” The O’Neill Centennial History, 1974. pp. 56-60. As the drouth became a fact that finally had to be acknowledged, O’Neill bowed to the inevitable and employed a rain-maker, according to Saunders’ Golden Jubilee edition of the Frontier. A contract was drawn with a rain-maker who agreed to produce at least a quarter-inch of rain within a stated period— or no pay. He set off his explosion and the period expired, but an hour or two later it rained. The rain-maker, a professor Melbourn, was to receive $3000 if he fulfilled his contract. Since he failed by a few hours the money was withheld, and the rain, which was very spotted, did little good in general.
More than sixty years after the demise of the ill-fated Golden Irrigation Company, irrigation did come to Holt County. The Ainsworth Irrigation Project was dedicated in the 1960’s and plans laid for the O’Neill Irrigation Unit. Irrigation today, however, is mostly by overhead sprinkler systems. The results have been spectacular and crop production increased many- fold.
Vincent Olson of Atkinson was the first to install the center pivot irrigation system in his area. That was in 1956 and the outfit was so successful that others wanted to try it, resulting in the first large concentration of. center pivots in the world. Then Vincent’s sons, Ted and Carroll, in 1966, designed and patented some improvements on their father’s original system and began irrigating more land of their own. When their neighbors showed a keen interest in the “walking” pipes that watered great circles of corn and alfalfa, the brothers decided to manufacture the systems.
In 1968 they put up their first plant building, eight and a half miles north of Atkinson, and started producing the center pivots. In 1969 they sold one and one-half million dollars worth of equipment and that fall added two more buildings to their plant. By 1974 their systems were in use in fifteen states and their sales amounted to six million dollars. The Olson Brothers Manufacturing Company’s annual $700,000 payroll contributes substantially to the economy of Holt County.
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