Conservative *
the remains of great frame hotels and
livery barns , relics of the mushroom
town that sprang up in response to the ,
magic touch of the section-hand's heavy
wand. But before this there was a'
Kearney City , of which today not a
vestige remains. It lay on the south
side of the Platte , on the western
boundary-line of the military reserva
tion , which was ten miles square and
covered land on both sides of the river.
Within this tract a military post was
established in 1848 , which was called
Fort Ohilds , the name being changed by
the war department , on December 30th.
of that year , to Fort Kearney , in mem
ory of General Stephen "W. Kearney ,
who had died in October. This was the
same officer who in the spring of 1888
selected the site of Nebraska City as
suitable for an ariny.post , and the fort
that had a brief existence there like
wise bore his name.
Neither settlement nor camping being
permitted on the reservation , there grew
up a halting-place on either edge of it
for the accommodation of travelers ; for
, , . it was at this point that all roads to the
v West , save that which ran from Kansas
City by way of the Arkansas , con
verged ; here met the streams of Pike's
Peakers and freighters from every town
i from Leavenworth to Florence. Eight
miles east of the fort stood Dog town ,
which had no importance ; but Doby-
town , two miles west of the fort , was
, for a time one of the swiftest towns on
the globe. It had its name from the
adobe of which its buildings were chiefly
made ; but it soon assumed the title of
Kearney Gity , and became county-seat
of Kearney county , which covered three
others besides the present county of that
name. Some say furthermore that
Dobytown and Dirty Woman's Ranch
were one and the same ; but the better
opinion seems to be that the euphonious
ranch was a few miles further west.
Here then was an organized county
and a busy trading-town , wicked and
thriving ; when the railroad appeared
across the river , and town and county
vanished in air. There was no transfer
'
from the old town to the new ; the in
habitants "merely scattered to the four
winds , the adobe houses lapsed into the
soil they came from , and the all-devour
ing farmer planted his corn on street ,
corner-lot and overland trail. The
county officers joined in the mad dance ;
they and their- records were whisked
away like autumn leav.es. Only one
book is known to be in existence show
ing the transactions of that busy time.
In May , 1871 , the United States aban
doned , Fort Kearney , and the slate was
wiped clean. In that same year the
Burlington road reached out this way ;
in 1872 the inhabitants moved for the
organization of a new Kearney county ;
and a fresh chapter was opened.
The freighting lasted only a few
'years , the railroad has already endured
thrice as long ; still it is not of the
railroad that the traveler thinks as hd
looks out of the car-window. His eyes
seek landmarks on the opposite bank ,
and the names that he meets suggest the
earliest days. Here is Brady's Island ,
where the bones of the hunter Brady
lay , just as the wolves had left them ,
when Fremont came by in 1842. Here
we see O'Fallon's Bluffs , which present
a steep yellow face to the river , just as
when the prairie-schooners had to cir
cumnavigate them ; a farmer's windmill
now Shows its head from behind them ,
and a well-graded country road comes
down through the middle of them.
It is strange how the name of Captain
J. C. Fremont has impressed itself upon
the geography of
. . ° r J
Fremont. .
this western coun
try. There is the city of Fremont ,
whose site he passed through on one of
his ten or twelve journeys across the
plains. There , on the old trail , was
Fremont's Orchard , above , below and
around which there was "awful sand ; "
there were Fremont's Springs and Fre
mont Station. And there is Fremont's
Butte , which is visible from the B. & M.
trains on the south , where the conductor
will tell you how the intrepid explorer
was "treed" for three days and nights
on its summit by Indians. As a matter
of fact , Fremont probably never saw
that butte. He only came this way
twice , namely , out and back on his first
expedition ; both times , so far as his
journal shows , he confined himself to
the Platte bottoms ; and the bntte is not
in sight from , the river at all. Further
more , Fremont never had any trouble
with Indians in this part of the
country.
Here now we come to a town with a
history Julesburg , Colorado. This is
Julcsburjj. not , however , the
ir i i
real Julesburg , nor
its immediate successor , but the third
of that name. It is little more than a
junction-point , where the lines to Den
ver and Ogden divide , as the stage-lines
and overland trails did before them
from old Julesburg. The main crossing
of the Platte was near by , called
Beauvais' Ford , after an early settler ,
a Swiss by birth ; there traffic for Fort
Laramie and the South Pass crossed the
river and went northwest , while the
Pike's Peak business continued up the
south bank of the South Fork. The
first Julesburg had its brief season of
glory in the winter of 1860 , when the
railroad rested there ; it had the renown ,
for the time being , of "the wickedest
town in America" which many other
frontier places , before and since , have
temporarily borne. It was one of the
soap-bubble towns , appropriately so
called , for the brevity of their life and
the brilliancy of their coloring ; when
the railroad moved on , it was whiffed
into the air , as Old Kearney had been ' \
before it. ; ; . ywygf-/ >
Why the town was called Julesburg
was long a source of trouble to the
Names. writer , who liar- . ! .
rossed the old- ;
timers of his acquaintance for information - ' -
tion on that head in vain. An old book '
in the public library says it was named . . "
in honor of one Dirty Julja who once " * 4 ;
inhabited the place ; but this was known ' . ' : *
"
to bo wrong , since all hands remembered L7 ' V
Old Jules himself , the founder of the " -f , " . '
town. What was his other name then ? . r " "
'
Of this they could tell nothing , though ; . , - *
'
each one was familiar with the tragic ' , , ! J
fate that befell Jules and his ears at the
hands of Slade the . One J \
, stage-agent. \ " > y.
of the publications of the Union Pacific f .I. * . - "
passenger department here came in with * .
the information that Julesburg was / /
named for "one Jules Burg , a desperado
who died with his boots on. " This too /
had an appearance of inaccuracy. It is . ' :
easy to invent a Jules ; the name was f- - . : > n.
surprisingly common among the early
hunters and traders , and , as pronounced ,
'
rhymes exactly with mules. The matter - . . ' . , . * >
ter was therefore in a state of doubt , \ ' \ ' . , ' /
when the beautiful book of Colonel : '
Henry Inman , of Topeka , on "The
Great Salt Lake Trail" appeared , and ' . ' ' * '
put it at rest with almost irritating ful- . ;
ness of detail. It was very simple , after z.- . '
all ; the man's name was Jules Bernard. ' * \ c
In order to leave no doubt whatever , - - "
Colonel Inman prints a letter from ' * .
'
Jules'wife , giving the particulars , so ' " " '
far as she know them , of the Slade ' ' , ' ,
'
affair. The moral of which is that you - * . -
can find out anything , if you can come
*
across the right man. .
WHAT AILS TUE LETTER ?
The popocratic organs are all declar
ing as with one voice that Mr. Bryan's
old letter to J. Sterling Morton avowing
that he wanted office for the money that
was in it and not the honor , is perfectly
straightforward , proper and creditable
to the great wearer of the Jeffersonian
mantle. Then why did Bryan deny it
and why did the popocratic organs de
nounce Mr. Morton fiercely as a liar
and a libeller because he said that Mr.
Bryan had once made a statement to
that purport to a friend ?
Morton doesn't appear to have set any
great store by the letter but merely
alluded to it because of Mr. Bryan's
violent and theatrical attacks on people
who , according to his pure mind were
in politics for the money and whose
greed for wealth was undoing the coun
try. And Bryan and his friends evi
dently saw the point and vociferously
denied it and challenged Morton to his
proof. That is what is the matter with
that letter. Nebraska State Journal.
Professor John Fiske's "History of
the United States" is thought not to be
fit to be used in Virginia schools.
