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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 2, 1899)
'Cbe Conservative , The traveler ON TIIK OMJ TKAIL. w h o goes from Hastings to Kearney on the B. & M. R. railroad , may , if ho will look about him as the train approaches the Platte river , espy a part of the veritable old trans continental trail ; the only part , so far as the writer is aware , that has survived through the thirty-odd years of peace ful life that overlie the old freighting days. Elsewhere , the soil of that abandoned highway has been fenced in and plowed up for these many years. The trail was older than any surveys , and disregarded them where there were any ; it went where it was easiest for it to go , and so soon came in conflict with section lines. So early as February , I860 , Alexander Majors found it neces sary to deprecate , in a public speech , - the growing tendency among settlers to enclose the full square of their landholdings - holdings , and thus compel the freighter and emigrant to go around. If the trail was threatened at that early dajr , when settlers were few and the traffic great , it is a wonder that anything of it was left to the closing years of freight ing ; and it is easy to understand how its coveted soil was ravished into agri culture as soon as the last ox-team had passed over it. The railroad reached Kearney in I860 ; that was the end of the freighting ; and under the circum stances , one could hardly expect to find any portion ofc'lhe trail still in existence. Still it is said by the old settlers that we have it here ; certainly there is a dim track visible on the prairie sod , now on one side of the line , now on the other ; where it descends into little draws , and the bank was dug away to make the crossing easier , it is quite distinct. And this is all that is left of one of the world's greatest highways. Is it likely that any of the five-thousand-year old trails of the East ever saw such an emigration as passed over this in the eight years following the discovery of gold in 1858 ? It was "a street across the wild prairies from forty to sixty feet wide , worn as hard as the street of an ordinary city , " says one observer ; * / . "a road bigger and plainer than any we had ever traveled before , " says another. There was "an almost continuous line' of teams and wagons from Denver to Nebraska City " the drivers used to amuse themselves on the return journey by counting the teams they met ; up wards of eight thousand , reports one lin June , I860 , which implied at least thirty & thousand men ; among them he also counted between five and six hundred women , besides children. ' We draw near to the Platte. Erudite travelers , getting their first glimpse of , this historic watercourse The Plutte. course from the top of the low bluffs ( which Fremont found full of cactus ) were wont to liken themselves to Xenophou's homeward- journeying Greeks , and cry out the Attic word for "the sea , " if they reT MS. meinbered it. Nobody ever had much good to say of it on closer acquaintance , liowever."Meanest of rivers , " said Bayard Taylor , in 18G6 , after crossing it at about this point. His ferryman showed him something now in the way of navigation ; his first move was to pull off his clothes and descend into the stream , where his art consisted in feel ing the way with his bare toes , and muling his craft after him in a course which was never twice the same. The pilgrim from Nebraska City to Fort Kearney in those days was spared this crossing , for Fort Kearney then stood on the south side of the river ; it was ihe unhappy or misguided traveler to or from Omaha who had to undergo the ordeal of the Platte. \ The river as it appears today consists of a handsome expanse of white sand , . , . of . apparently . .1 The Channels. , . . , limitless extent. Close observation , however , reveals sun dry tiny meandering threads of water , sufficient perhaps for a scanty duck's footbath. This astonishes no one who is familiar with the Platte , for that peculiar stream is occasionally to be surprised as innocent of water as a heathen goddess of clothing. So whether its Indian name , Neprathka or Nebraska , meant , as the early French and Ameri can explorers understood , "shallow , " or , as Mr. Wm. Ashby of Beatrice has sug gested in a communication to THE CON SERVATIVE , "fine white sand , " its appropriateness is beyond criticism. The train proceeds toward Kearney , and presently we are favored with another installment of the Platte. Here is more sand ; but this channel is nar rower , and there is therefore less room for trifling ; accordingly we find here running water enough for a duck to swim in , if he were willing to risk scraping his toes. It was no such stream , as this that barred travel by its floods and sucked down wagons and cattle into its quicksands in the pioneer days ; but barring the difference in quantity of water , the geography of the place seems to be just thejiajmey Bayard'Taylor BOW jit--just as"we do. He was returning from Colorado ; he did not enjoy stage coaches ; he saw that they were built for small lean men , and he was a largo man himself ; and he was looking forward with pleasure to a night on the railroad train , which was waiting for him at Lone Tree Station , or Columbus. He was disgusted moreover with the man ner of ferrying described above , par ticularly as the ferryman at one point invited him likewise to discard his raiment and put his shoulder to the boat. The Platte once crossed , how ever , he began to enjoy the ride ; they went on for miles , he says , past meadows , corn fields and beautiful groves , and he was probably thinking himself half way to Lone Tree , when , behold , there was more Platte ; and they had to begin over again. It was bheu that he called it a mean river. This secondary current is probably what is called in freighting history Ox . _ , Channel. There A Legend. . is a tradition about it iii connection with General Sherman ; which , however , the writer will refrain from trying to tell , because he is con scious that it is fragmentary in his mind. In outline , it is to the effect that General Sherman was sent , soon after the war , to examine into the feasibility of bridging the Platte near Fort Kear ney , and that he reported adversely ; also ( whether it has any connection with this part or not ) that "the boys" determined to show him a thing , and so , after having conveyed him safely across Ox Channel , they made him wade the rest of the river in a winter storm , with the water up to his waist and no band to play "Marching Through . " - " Georgia. - There have been many Kearneys. The Kearney of today is a flat town in a land of infinite Kearney. . flatness , having wide streets , which run , with lines of full telegraph poles , the stiffest and most angular things in creation , straight off into the dusty haze that forms the horizon. It has an air of being halfway somewhere ; this appears to have struck others as well , for the hotel is called The Midway. Looking at the map , one would judge Kearney to be on the Platte river ; looking at the town , he perceives it to be on the Union Pacific railroad. The river flows quiet ly past and makes no sign. The 'rail road runs through with a commotion that is not to be disregarded. Where will one find longer or heavier trains , or more magnificent engines ? Here is one of the ten-wheelers , terrible monsters , whose tread jars the earth , and whose exhaust is like the discharge of a small cannon up the smoke stack ; distinctly audible at night at the other end of town. And here is a humble eight- wheeler , on detached service , which looks as if it could creep under the giant's belly. THE CONSERVATIVE is sufficiently primitive to find in the charge of a modern locomotive in full career something of the awful splendor ( of Nature's own manifestations of power , in the thunderstorm of the mountains or the surf of the ocean. And little man never appears to better advantage than in his capacity of master of this iron bulk , which by skillful manipula tion of a little fire and water he causes to project itself through space at insane speed , while cunning Mr. Man and his belongings hang on behind. The town as it now stands has an old part and a new. The former , which has the greater More Kearney. , , , , interest to the antiquarian , lies across the railroad track to. the south. There may be seen , i fr MM > B lMB rt ? ? gy a * K * " * * * * " * " " ' ' * l | * pf * L . | -ly fclZtSS SSSja