And These Were Highways?
Chapter Five The Blue Pole Highway, laid out in the 1920’s, was more popularly known as the “Speculation Highway,” for no one knew whether it would be a paying project or not. It ran from Ewing to O’Neill, and herewith is a description of its route. “Follow the railroad track one mile west of Ewing, cross the track and follow it on the south side to the Willow Swamp. Cross the tracks again and proceed on the north side to and across the Dougherty Crossing and into the village of Stafford.’/ The highway then led past the post office and Crandall’s store, where it turned west for about a mile, then north a mile to the tracks again. Another mile west and another north to O’Donnel’s Lake, then across a bridge and on past the Ryan place and the Purdy place, then over the cemetery hill. Here the highway turned north again for five miles to the correction line, then one-fourth mile west, one mile north, one west and another northwest, and so into O’Neill. This pioneer road, laid out, graded and surfaced with hay to keep the sand from blowing, was officially named “The Blue Pole Highway” because of the blue paint, splashed on fence posts, that marked its tortuous route.
By the 1920’s quite a number of travelers were driving automobiles and this highway was a definite improvement over the trail that had preceded it, or over the one then used by wayfarers between Inman and Chambers.
The little town of Chambers, located near the head of the South Fork Valley, was surrounded by a wide and fertile farm and ranch area and attracted considerable early settlement. Its one serious drawback was its isolation from ready access to needed goods and services. Inman, on the Chicago and Northwestern railroad, offered the nearest and best supply of lumber, groceries and drygoods, as well as an excellent hay market and the most extensive storage facilities for baled hay in the country. A well traveled trail soon linked the Elkhorn Valley with that of the South Fork but it was a trail that tried men’s souls.
Freight wagons coming out of the Chambers valley had to cross no less than five bridges before entering the sandhills, where they angled for about four miles to the northeast to 21 enter the south valley of the Elkhorn. There the traveler could make a choice of three or four different trails— all equally hazardous.
Walt Sire, who lived beside the Chambers-Inman trail during ten years of his boyhood (1914-1924), stated that he saw people experience “almost every kind of trouble” on that road; and that, after he was out of highschool, he hauled many a load of baled hay to Inman over the “troublesome trail” himself. In dry seasons the sandhills’ portion was hard to pull with a loaded wagon; in wet weather steel wheel rims cut through the sod in the soft meadows, letting the wagons drop nearly out of sight in the bogs beneath. Even after reaching the Blue Pole Highway in the Elkhorn valley drivers often found the going far from easy.
To improve the sandhills part, ranchers bedded the worst spots with hay or slough grass. “I remember,” said Sire, “when almost the entire four-mile strip was bedded with slough hay.” During the hay hauling season (winter and spring) South Fork farmers made a trip every other day, loading up in the afternoon and starting from home about three or four o’clock the next morning. They drove four horses to each wagon, hitched abreast, and traveled in trains of three or four to ten or twelve outfits. Most wagons carried extra log chains and doubletrees, prepared to double-team and pull each other out of the bad places.
“A good pair of rubber boots often came in handy, as it was not uncommon to have to carry a load of hay out of a swampy place, a bale at a time, then reload after the wagon had been recovered from the bog. Once Bert Good, a born prankster, told an Inman merchant who owned a fine hay meadow, that he had left the running gears of his wagon in his meadow that morning. It wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened, and the land owner, considerably irritated, asked where the wagon was. ‘Oh, don’t worry, George, you’ll know when you hit it with the mower next summer,’ Bert told him.
“If the hay-haulers could make it out of the sandhills by sunup, and get across the wet meadows without too much trouble, they could be in town and unloaded by noon. Inman had three livery barns at one time and they were often all full by the middle of the day. Mr. and Mrs. Frank Conard ran the hotel and their dinner tables were usually full of South Fork farmers at. noon.
“There were, of course, many other travelers on the Inman-Chambers road besides hay-haulers, and all were well aware of the hazards of the hills and planned to make it through to the South Fork before dark. However, a breakdown, a bottleneck at the hay barns or a train in town, keeping the tracks tied up, could cause delays that left a traveler looking for shelter along the road, come night. Our ranch, on the north side of the hills, was a stopping place for many a weary wagoner. My dad and I often took a lantern to the barns to help a stranded neighbor from the South Fork valley bed down his horses for the night, while Mother would be fixing a meal and arranging a bed for the late corner.
“Those five bridges on the Chambers end of the trail presented problems, too, especially in the spring when the ice was going out. On Easter Sunday, 1916, my mother, father, sister and I crossed one of the bridges with a team and buggy less than twenty minutes before the ice took it out.
“When cars came into use drivers soon learned to use this trail in the daylight hours. For headlamps were of little use to one who did not know the road, nor which of the look-alike branching side roads to take; or where the sod would likely break through and leave him sitting in his car with all wheels hopelessly bogged. “The exceptions were the Inman and Chambers basketball teams and their followers. Invariably the cars would get separated and some of them always wound up in our door- yard at all hours of the night, wanting to know where they were. A lost basketball team from Chambers drove into our yard one night. They noted a peculiar odor and reported my dad for making moonshine.
“My younger brother had smallpox and what was really happening was that we were fumigating my clothes with formaldehyde so that I could go back to town to highschool. When Sheriff Duffy came down to see about it, he apoligized for the intrusion and said, ‘I told them I’d just be wasting the taxpayer’s money by coming out here.’ ” Among the earliest freight lines in Holt County was the one from O’Neill to Neligh, forty miles to the southeast. When Pat Hagerty opened O’Neill’s first store in 1875 he hired freighters to haul his supplies. Levi VanValken- burgh, who homesteaded near the present town of Inman in 1879, freighted for Hagerty until the railroad reached O’Neill in 1881. His work kept him almost continually on the road, as it took two days to make the trip from the railroad town of Neligh to the inland town of O’Neill, hauling the supplies needed by the Inman’s first basketball team, 1911. Back row: George Wilcox, Mr. Breckn- meyer (teacher), ?. Second row: Paul Bittner, Roy Goree, Walter Colman. Front: Floyd Colman. Courtesy Karl Keyes, Inman.
new settlement.
The winter of 1880-81 was a bad one. Snow fell each week from October through March and the weather was very cold. When on the road, Mr. VanValkenburgh slept under his wagon at night, often in below zero temperatures. That winter the government had two Indian freighters on the road, hauling supplies to the Indian reservation, up in Dakota. Each Indian had a regulation freight wagon and four good horses. VanValken-burgh had only an old wagon, smaller than a freighter, and an old team of mules.
As the snow got deeper the white freighter began to have trouble. On one trip, with snow drifts five or six feet deep, Levi was following the government freighters. When the Indians had to double-team to get their wagons through a particularly bad place, he knew that he’d never get through with his single team of old mules. When one of the Indians came back with his four horses to pull him through, he had to tell him that he had no money. “Don’t worry,” said the Indian, “You won’t have to pay.” Even then the white man feared his old wagon would never stand the strain of the pull through the drifts, but it did.
The freighters had planned to make camp that night, but when the weather turned threatening again the Indians said they must travel all night. The outfit reached VanValkenburgh’s shack very early in the morning, where worried Mrs. VanValkenburgh, 22 who said she had heard the creak and rattle of the wagons as they crossed the river, a mile away, had the shack warm and the ten- and twelve-year- old boys up and dressed. While the boys stabled the worn-out mules, the wife put her nearly frozen husband in a chair in front of the cook stove and fed him hot soup to thaw him out. After the railroad reached O’Neill in 1881 another important freight and stage route opened between O’Neill and Niobrara, far to the northeast. The area had quickly developed into a thriving farm country, with an abundance of grain and hogs to be shipped east. Thus the necessity for freight lines to haul the produce to the railroad and return with lumber, groceries and other supplies for the developing farms north of the river. The haul was long and hard, both for men and animals, and “stopover” points were necessary. One of the best of these was at Star, twenty-three miles northeast of O’Neill and midway between that point and Niobrara. The place was operated by Emory Downey, a New Yorker who homesteaded there in 1880 and freighted from Neligh with an ox team for awhile. After the railroad reached O’Neill, he built a large sod house on his claim. The dwelling quickly became a hotel, with as many as eighteen freighters sleeping on the floor of the main room at night. The charge was fifty cents for bed and breakfast.
When Downey applied for a post office at his place one of the names submitted was “Star,” suggested by his seventeen-year-old son, Charles. Star was chosen by the postal department, and Charles became the mail carrier and stage driver, with Fred Kelly as his alternate. The stage carried passengers, mail sacks, bags of prairie chickens and mutton for the market, and many other articles. Charles Boies ready to pull out of O’Neill for Butte, on stage owned by A. O. (Az) Perry. 1895. Clay Johnson collection. The first stop out of O’Neill was Mineola, on Louse Creek, then Star, and then Apple Creek, about five miles on north where the “Emerson House” also provided lodging and meals. Stoney Butte was next, and then Niobrara.
Star, of course, was the regular overnight stop, both ways, when the stage was able to keep to its schedule. This made the hotel and stage business very profitable for the Downeys. However, breakdowns, sudden storms, washouts on the trail, or a sick animal could delay the stage, making it necessary to stop at whatever hotel or shelter was nearest. In addition to the stage-mail route from O’Neill, a man on horseback carried mail from Orchard, down in Antelope County, to Mars and Venus in Knox County, then to Middle Branch in Holt County, and on north to Star. Being the hub for all this territory, Star quickly grew into a busy little town. E. E. Cole operated a store next to the town pump. A man named Peak ran a drug store there, Daniel Ridgeway had a harness shop and a Mr. Keser a blacksmith shop.
Another stage line operated from O’Neill to Butte, above the Niobrara and well to the northwest of O’Neill. This one. was owned by A. O. (Az) Perry. Charles Boies and Charles Jones were his drivers. Perry, an enthusiastic promoter of transportation, vastly preferred a railroad to a stage line and tried to build one from Atkinson across the river into Boyd County. The people around Butte were especially excited over the prospects of the railroad and eagerly bought shares in the project. Az platted his own town, to be called Perryville, at one point on the planned road and actually built a grade, with teams and scrapers, from Atkinson to the Niobrara river. But there the money and enthusiasm ran out. No rails were ever laid and the embryo town of Perryville was moved over to Butte. The twenty-four miles of sturdy grade (which is still visible) was all that was left of the glittering dream of a railroad to Butte.
The stages that covered these routes, and others in Holt County, were similar to those used all through the West. Usually a “Concord Coach,” the vehicle was well-built and sturdy and could, if necessary, carry eighteen persons, nine clinging to the top and nine packed inside. The driver was known as “Whip, Charlie or Jehu,” the guard, if there was one, as “Shotgun.” The following “Tips for Stagecoach Travelers” were worth observing: “The best seat inside a stage is the one next to the driver. Even if you have a tendency to seasickness when riding backwards— you’ll get over it and will get less jolts and jostling. Don’t let a ‘sly elph’ trade you his mid-seat. In cold weather don’t ride with tight-fitting boots, shoes or gloves. When the driver asks you to get off and walk, do so without grumbling. He won’t request it unless absolutely necessary. If the team runs away— sit still and take your chances. If you jump, nine out of ten times you will get hurt.
“In very cold weather abstain entirely from liquor when on the road: because you will freeze twice as quickly when under its influence. Don’t growl at the food received at the station: stage companies generally provide the best they can get. Don’t keep the stage waiting. Don’t smoke a strong pipe inside the coach. Spit on the leeward side. If you have anything to drink in a bottle pass it around. Procure your stimulants before starting, as ‘ranch’ (Stage Depot) whiskey is not ‘nectar.’ “Don’t swear or lop over neighbors when sleeping. Take small change to pay expenses. Never shoot on the road as the noise might frighten the horses. Don’t discuss politics or religion. Don’t point out where murders have been committed, especially if there are women passengers. Don’t lag at the wash basin. Don’t grease your hair because travel is dusty. Don’t imagine for a moment that you are going on a picnic. Expect annoyances, discomfort and some hardship.”* The stage business over the O’Neill- Niobrara route was good until 1887, when the land office was moved from Niobrara to O’Neill. Until then homesteaders in Holt County had to make the trip to Niobrara to file on their land, and to “prove up” on it later. After the removal of the office to Reprinted from the Omaha Herald, October 3, 1877. 23 O’Neill the stage business diminished so much that the route was later discontinued. Today only the deep ruts worn by the wheels of stage and freight wagons, near the remains of the old sod hotel, preserve the memories of the old trail to Niobrara. A Northwestern railroad timetable for January, 1912, shows stages still running out of O’Neill with connections to Turner, eighteen miles north, and Chambers, about twenty miles southwest. The fare to Turner was $1.50, to Chambers $1.00. Hand baggage was carried free.
Hostleries such as the Star Hotel and the Emerson House were apt to be overfull when storms came up and stages and freight wagons were snowed in. In addition, settlers who First “Whiting Bridge” across the Niobrara near concer. Built in 1890, this picture was taken in 1925. near Spencer. m 107 this had come long distances to “take the stage,” or to pick up or deliver passengers and mail, or to ship out a bag of prairie chickens, had to spend the night, too, when the stage didn’t get in until after dark.
The “Halfway House,” built in 1900 on the Brodie place, a farm now owned by Don Schafer, was another welcome stop, this one for freighters on the trail from Stuart to Naper, in Boyd County. Here they obtained board and lodging for themselves and stabling for their tired teams. William Krotter, Stuart lumberman, and his teamsters, with four horses to each wagon, freighted countless loads of lumber over that sandy trail to several South Dakota towns where he operated lumber yards. The Krotter family still operates the original lumber business in Stuart.
Still another much used stage and freight trail ran north from Atkinson to various other settlements in Boyd County, above the Niobrara. And for all the trails that crossed that swift running stream, the river was a serious obstacle, especially for loaded freight wagons. Settlers with their lighter rigs could ford the Niobrara but the wagons couldn’t. Bridges became a necessity.
The first bridge across the Niobrara was built by Walter Townsend of Page. Known as the “Whiting bridge, the name derived from E. L. Whiting, whose wife was half Sioux. In her name Whiting, in 1881, took an Indian allotment just west of the present Hydro-electric plant, south of the present town of Spencer. Both Mr. and Mrs. Whiting were hospitable folks, holding continual open house at their place and helping newcomers find suitable homes on the frontier. Many remembered the good meals Mrs. Whiting served and the exciting Indian tales she told. During high water seasons before the bridge was built, Whiting ferried travelers across the river on a boat.
Wreck of the Whiting Bridge. Ice jams and spring land slides destroyed the steel portion of the bridge. Courtesy Sarah Michaelis. Freighters operating between Butte and Atkinson in early 1900’s. Courtesy Lawrence Kramer. 24 The Whiting bridge was also used by freighters from O’Neill, hauling to the army camp at Fort Randall in South Dakota, and while it was under construction one of Townsend’s workmen, Barney Stewart, a Kentuckian, was married on the bridge. Barney later became an auctioneer at Page. Other bridges across the Niobrara were located at Grand Rapids, nearly straight north of Stuart, and at Par-shall’s crossing south of Butte. At Grand Rapids a wide island, known as Badger Island, split the river into two channels. For some years wooden bridges connected both banks of the river with the road across the island. Because of the trail a little town grew up on the south bank of the river, near the end of the bridge. The river, however, was erratic and unpredictable, changing its course, washing away its banks and bringing the stream ever nearer the buildings at Grand Rapids. The problem worsened each spring when the ice broke up and great chunks of it lodged against the bridge, damming the river. When the jam broke, releasing a tremenduous sweep of water and leaping, crashing ice floes, the bridge was invariably damaged and more of the river’s banks eaten away. While the bridge was under repair the freighters and stages resorted to ferries.
As the bank crumbled under the river’s attack and the cluster of buildings at Grand Rapids seemed about to tumble into the water, it was deemed best to move the store and post office a mile or more to the south. There a new town, Dustin, flourished for a time, then disappeared when it was no longer needed.
Because of the annual ice damage the Parshall’s Crossing bridge, built in 1906, did well to last until the great ice jam and flood of 1910 took most of it out. An enterprising citizen then put in a ferry and hauled freight and passengers across the river until John Deming and his brother-in-law, Norris Hughes, bought him out and ran the ferry until the new bridge, built on concrete supports, was completed. Later, when another ice jam took the roadway off it, leaving only the supports, maintainers strung cables between the pilings and fastened planks across them. This “swinging bridge,” 370 feet long and installed at a cost of $680.00, was anything but popular. One account relates that it was customary to lead horses across it— and pull the buggies across by hand. This may have been the bridge referred to by a writer who stated that “some fellow for the lust of money cut the bridge one night, so he could gain by charging for ferrying.” At one time there was a footbridge across the Niobrara at Parshall’s Crossing, although it, too, needed many repairs to keep it usable until 1916, when the three-span steel bridge was finished. The first durable bridge to span the beautiful but troublesome Niobrara in Holt County, its completion was celebrated by one thousand people, all gathered to take part in its dedication. Miss Dollie Reiser commemorated the happy occasion by christening the gleaming new bridge with a bottle of champagne and the Honorable J. A. Davies of Butte delivered the address of the day.
Another short-lived swinging bridge once spanned the river at Anncar, near the site of the former Whiting bridge. This bridge shortened the distance from Anncar to Spencer and was promoted by Hugh O’Neill, who hoped to attract trade from across the river to the town he was platting at his place, home of the Anncar post office. But when the ice went out the following spring the bridge went with it, and the new town died aborning. During the winter months, when the river was solidly frozen over, many travelers crossed on the ice. This was well enough, except in the fall when the ice was freezing, and in late winter when it began to soften. Every now and then, at such times, a vehicle broke through, as Al Prine did when he once tried to cross with a truck loaded with grain.
The names of other persevering and courageous Holt County freighters live on in a few brief bits of history. William Hartland, as a young man, drove the mail from O’Neill to Paddock and also freighted from O’Neill to Spencer. He is said to have freighted the mill stones from Nio-brara to the Eagle Mill on Eagle Creek. In the winter of 1909-10 Charley Adams hauled the lumber for a big barn from Stuart to his place at Dustin on a sled. He used four horses in a tendem hitch to pull the sled and once, when the sled broke down on the trail, he had to unload the lumber, make repairs, and reload before he The second Whiting Bridge, with the Northern Nebraska Power Co. dam in the background. Courtesy Sarah Michaelis. Hugh O’Neill could go on.
In the swampy country in the southern part of the county many good horses died of “swamp fever” in the early days. B. B. Kelley, who came into that area as a boy in 1884, in 1898 moved onto a farm near Carson, in the far southwest corner of the county. Having lost his horses to swamp fever, he bought mules, as they seemed to be immune to the disease, and for years ran two freight wagons, pulled by eight head of mules, from his place to Burwell, down near the southern edge of Garfield County. “Eight-mule Kelley,” as he was soon known, hauled many a ton of loose and baled hay to the railroad at Burwell, and other tons of groceries, lumber and coal back to the ranches in his neighborhood. It is said that an early emmigrant to the sandhill area of Holt County found this crudely lettered sign along a winding trail, “GOD MADE THIS COUNTRY RIGHT SIDE UP. DON’T TURN IT OVER.” Good advice, for wherever the native sod was turned by the plow, blow-outs soon developed. The same thing happened where wheels wore away the thin 25 sod, exposing the sand below. When the trails became too deep for traffic, travelers simply made new tracks alongside the old ones, leaving the earlier ones to grow into big blowouts under the ceaseless winds. The first attempts at holding these shifting roadbeds was by the use of hay or rushes as “paving” material. This was unsatisfactory because constant replacement was necessary. Nevertheless by 1920 the first “graded road” in the county, the thirty miles between the Antelope County line and O’Neill, was such a road. Thrown up by a “heavy gang” maintenance crew, its entire length was covered with straw to prevent the sand from blowing.
The building of grades, dams and dikes, in the years before motor driven machinery came into use, was hard, brutal work. It meant dragging tons of earth up steep inclines with horses and mules hooked to fresnos and dump wagons. Men and animals were skinned, bruised and sometimes crippled. Most of the work was necessarily done in the summer time when mosquitoes, especially at night, were a plague on man and beast. For this reason a man was hired to keep a smudge going all night, just to keep conditions bearable.
One of the workmen on Highway 281, south of O’Neill, where more than one hundred head of horses were used, years later recalled the din made by the tired animals whinnying at the end of a long day, in anticipation of feed and a night’s rest.
Three hitches of four head each of twelve-hundred to fifteen-hundred pound horses were used on awkward This picture, taken in 1909, shows a crew building a “temporary bridge and trolley” across the Niobrara at Red Bird. Courtesy Bob Tomlinson. Joe McCoy at Cedar Creek bridge. About 1900. looking elevated graders to build those first rough gravel and clay highways across the county. The Finley Construction Company of Missouri Valley, Iowa, built the dirt dike at the Spencer dam. Constructed on an old hay meadow, the grass was first mowed and raked, then earth was hauled in for the project. It was a dry year and horse feed had to be bought elsewhere and hauled in. With scores of four-horse teams and dump wagons hauling all this feed and earth from the north side of the river across the old Whiting bridge, too many of them pulled onto the bridge at one time and it collapsed. In 1920 the county had 134 miles of roads designated as “state.” Sixty- nine of these miles were termed “improved,” two had been “constructed by contract,” thirty (O’Neill to Ewing) surfaced with hay and thirty-seven built by “heavy gang crew.” Dry, windy weather for long periods in most years made maintenance costly, as the grades quickly became pitted, blown-out and rough. Heavy snowfalls in winter, coupled with drifting, required a great deal of plowing and shoveling; and burning of weeds was almost entirely prohibited because of the danger of prairie fires.
Even so, “More and Better Roads” had come to be the watchword in the county, and this in spite of the fact that construction of better roads was unduly expensive because clay, to surface and hold the sandy grades, had to be hauled long distances to the roadways.
At the end of 1920 it was proudly noted that, “From an irregular winding trail the O’Neill-Butte road is on the way to becoming a standard highway on which all grades have been reduced over ten per cent.” Good gravel had been discovered on this stretch and nearly five miles of it already surfaced. By 1924 a State Aid bridge had been built across the Niobrara at Red Bird, and a Federal Aid concrete arch bridge replaced the defunct old Whiting bridge.
By 1930 the constantly increasing motor traffic made it imperative that an improved type of surfacing be found. Much of this traffic consisted of truck loads of hay and cattle, bound for Omaha and Sioux City markets. Even though the trucks of that period were pigmies compared with today’s behemoths, their weight was still too much for the thin gravel surfaces of Holt County highways. In addition, summer tourist traffic through the county to the Black Hills threw an added burden on the roads with each passing season.
Since the county had sand in abundance, the road engineers experimented with an oil topping, a mixture of sand and oil, smoothed and pressed into a semi-permanent road bed. Some of the earliest experi-26 mentation with oiled highways took place in the sandhills of Holt and Wheeler counties. In 1934-35 such an oiled stretch was completed between Atkinson and Stuart, on Highway 20, by State Highway Engineer Earl Burtis and his engineering crew, Wesley Hansig, George Rump and Dewey Nemetz (recently retired from the U. S. Treasury Department).
The crew threw up a sand grade with horses and small two-handled scoops. Then a five-inch mat of hot oil, poured on the sand and mixed in by small “blades,” was built up, spread and pressed onto the road surface. The result was a pretty good road— at $10,000 a mile, a fraction of the cost of a brick or concrete highway.
The weather, however, was the villain that upset many well laid plans to extend the county’s all-weather road system. Funds appropriated for hard surfacing highways could disappear at a gulp when a dry summer, followed by a hard winter, such as happened in the summer of 1935 and the winter of 1936, moved in on the district. Extremely dry weather sharply increased the cost of maintaining farm to market gravel roads. The deep and heavy snows that followed used the rest of the road fund in the winter-long battle to keep the highways open. Nevertheless, until the second World War drastically slowed progress, the county had gained steadily on its promise to provide “More and Better Roads.” Recovery of the road department after the war was slow. Equipment was worn out and roads in poor condition. A severe flood or blizzard would have paralyzed the county. Fortunately neither happened until machinery had been replaced and other gains accomplished. Then, in the wet summer of 1947, a ten inch rain put Highways 11, 281, 20 and 275 under water and washed out bridges, approaches and grades. As a result the road department spent the rest of the season repairing the damage, and little new road work was done. The nightmare winter of 1949 followed all too soon.
In spite of the many difficulties and set-backs, Holt County continued to forge ahead, often by starts and stops, but still ahead. Today a heavy volume of all kinds of traffic travels east and west and north and south across the county on a fine network of sturdy hard-topped roads.
It is interesting to review the kinds of vehicles that negotiated the big county’s trails and highways in the past. The vast number of freight and covered wagons, some drawn by oxen, the rest by mules and horses, have already been noted. Frederick This picture, taken in 1911, shows an early Ford car and a truck, one of the first used in O’Neill. Courtesy of Lyle Ruff. Wefso traveled between his farm and Stuart in the early days in a “Democrat,” a two-seated buggy, pulled by a horse or a mule. The more affluent drove two-seated carriages with coal oil side lamps for night travel and front and side curtains for wet or stormy weather. The great middle class traveled in single seated bugies, two-seated spring wagons or lumber wagons.
And even in those horse and buggy days there were tourists. Nathaniel Zink, of Holt County, wanted to see the Rocky Mountains and a strange place called Yellowstone Park. This was long before the days of automobiles and graded roads, so Nathaniel spent the winter planning a route that would take him past points where he could replenish his supply of groceries and oats. In the spring he rigged up a two-seated wagon, stocked it well with supplies and a big tent, and turned the running of the ranch over to his sons.
Then he and Mrs. Zink, accompanied by a neighbor and wife, set out across the prairie in a westerly direction. They had a good trip, saw the mountains and the park, and were back at the ranch before the first snow flew that fall.
Soon after 1910 automobiles, mostly Fords, began to be seen on the roads in increasing numbers. In 1918 a Model T truck with solid tires on the back wheels and pneumatic tires on the front appeared in the Dustin area. From 1913 on, other makes were increasingly common: Buick roadsters, Dodges, Maxwells, Overlands, Saxon, Brushes, Studebakers and high wheeled, hard tired internationals. Travel in those early motor cars was seldom smooth or easy. Marjorie Rosenkrans remembers her family’s secondhand Model T. It had to be cranked of course, and when the engine started the car took off “and they had to run to catch it.” When the weather turned bad they snapped on the side curtains and bundled up in blankets, as heaters hadn’t yet been thought of. “On cold Sundays when we went to church we drained the radiator to keep it from freezing. Sometimes we tried covering the radiator to keep it from freezing, but it usually froze anyway. This kept the water from circulating and a little way down the road the steam began to roll and the driver to sweat— until we got it thawed out. And the windshield would frost over so that it kept the driver busy rubbing a little spot to see through.” In March, 1918, Fred Zink moved his family from South Dakota to Stuart. Earnest Zink, with his 1916 Buick, met his brother’s wagon at Springview, to take Mrs. Zink and the children back to the ranch at Stuart while Mr. Zink went back to South Dakota after the farm and household equipment. The day was bitter cold and the side curtains were of little help. Everyone wrapped up in heavy blankets and they sat out. About two miles west of the Carns store on the Niobrara bottom one of the front wheels crashed into a deep, frozen chuckhole and several of its wooden spokes were broken.
The passengers went on to Carns in a borrowed farm wagon, where they spent several days in the back room of the store while waiting for a new wheel to come from Norfolk.
In the early ’30s David Adams of Dustin bought an enclosed Model T Ford. Cars of that vintage had the fuel tank under the front seat and the gasoline flowed by gravity from the tank to the carburetor. If the fuel was low in the tank and one started up a long, steep grade, making the carburetor higher than the fuel in the tank, the engine would use the fuel in the carburetor— and stop. The driver, 27 after cussing because he was low on fuel, then got out, took the seat cushion out and unscrewed the gas tank cap. He then blew air into the tank until he had enough pressure to force the gas ahead and refill the carburetor. After all this he started the engine and tried to get on up the hill before it stopped again.