SIDNEY, NEBRASKA, 1870S TOUGH PIONEER CROSSROADS

The TRAIL BOSS was able to control his cowboys on the Texas Trail but, when they had shipped the herds, look out as they let off steam. They were not alone. Railroad crews, transient gunmen, seasoned explorers, gold seekers, and determined pioneers heading for land along the Columbia River were in the mixture of temporary residents of Sidney in the later1800s. One can imagine the results.

An estimated 48 to 76 bordellos lined the dusty, muddy paths they called streets. Disagreements were settled by bullets. Reckless gunplay could include shooting at a person just to see how close you could come without actually hitting him. One reported gunman delighted in shooting at melons offered for sale on a makeshift table, but hit the salesperson, instead. The sheriff was accused of being on the side of the bad guys.

Passengers on the Union Pacific Railroad were advised not to get off at Sidney. Eventually, the doors of the trains were locked and no one could leave. Finally, 64 of the town's upstanding citizens had enough and issued the notice excerpted here:

All murderers, thieves, pimps, and slick-fingered gentlemen .. must go. They are given due notice to do so,  Law and order must henceforth prevail. The law will guide us where the law is possible; where it is impossible the power of right will be invoked.

Well, it WAS invoked. Authorities rounded up the worst of the lot, who included a seven-foot rowdy named Red McDonald, and hung hem high on the trees next to the railroad, where passengers could see the results of the change in Sidney. The Trail Boss above may be pondering the fate of those buried on Boot Hill, a place where -- years later -- four skeletons were found, thought to be four others of the worst.

A good thing, too, despite the fact that, less than three years later, the largest gold bullion robbery in the USA to that time was in Sidney. The gold arrived on a stagecoach from the Dakotas and, during the transfer time, simply disappeared.

Today the lively small town of Sidney is home to the World Headquarters of the outdoor supplies manufacturer Cabela's, with its stores springing up swiftly. Citizens live peacefully as one would expect in Nebraska, and travelers go both ways through the gap that saw so many travelers headed toward the Pacific or the Columbia River country in the 1800s

A CHAOTIC MIXTURE OF PEOPLE IN CENTRAL NEBRASKA

Sidney NEBRASKA!! I called it Sidney, Alaska, within the last post! As a Western Washington writer, I  guess my brain typed Alaska as more familiar. Apologies to all concerned. Embarrassed blogger, JoAnn Roe.
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This sculpture is on a pleasant green in front of the world headquarters of Cabela's at Sidney, NEBRASKA, the outdoor store that is succeeding so swiftly.  On my recent trip we flew into Denver, Colorado, and drove north to Sidney, a few miles south of the North Platte River for an overnight at Sidney Lodge. From there we could turn east to Ogallala the following day. I need to set the stage for traveling the North Platte River paths.

The routes west in the mid-1800s, before the transcontinental railroad, depended on where travelers crossed the Missouri River . We won't get into that saga  here, but only say that  those coming west tended to follow trails that converged on Fort Kearny and continued up the North Platte River, becoming  routes known as the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail, or sometimes just called the Overland Trail.

We will talk more about the Wild and Woolly West in the next post, but here I must explain why we were bound east to Ogallala before we turned back to the West.

From about 1875 to 1885, Ogallala was the northern terminus of the Texas trail so familiar to those who viewed the movie and TV series, "Lonesome Dove." Texas ranch employees drove their cattle herds to Ogallala to put them on the Union Pacific Railroad bound for eastern markets, and to sell some stock to the growing number of ranchers in Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana. One can only imagine the chaos in Ogallala when the dusty, tired, thirsty and lonely cowboys from Texas and in between were finally free of the cattle herds. And your imagination seldom will be as lurid as the real happenings.

Sidney was equally important because, when gold was discovered in the Dakota country by Custer, the prospectors turned north at Sidney from the east-west trail toward hopeful prosperity from gold discoveries. As the transcontinental railroad marched westward through Sidney, railroad workers, gold seekers, cowboys and pioneers became a volatile mix. Adding to the mayhem were  Indians (or Native Americans) angry that the U.S. Government was not meeting its promises of sufficient beef to feed their people and the intrusion of gold seekers.  Clashes among humans became as intense as the elk bull battles depicted above.

We will talk about it  in a couple of days from now....

NEBRASKA THE GATEWAY TO THE COLUMBIA RIVER

Endless, almost electric green acres rolled on to the horizon in north central Nebraska, where fields from South Dakota virtually joined those of its southerly neighbor. It was what I expected. As we drove on west, everything changed. Hills turned into ridges, and the Platte River tributaries laced through the ever more rugged southwest Nebraska lands. Buttes of needle like stature  rivaled my memory of Arizona or New Mexico, leaping from the green earth like aliens seeking to appear from some subterranean city. This was Nebraska???

Nebraska was the center of westward movement toward the mysterious and distant Pacific Ocean. It hosted Texans like those in the popular "Lonesome Dove" who drove half-starved cattle north to Ogallala west of Omaha to ship them east to feeder markets on the only railroad in the Prairies for awhile, or sold them to pioneers sprinkled across adjacent Wyoming, South Dakota, and parts of Colorado.  What was not evident at first was that the road to Oregon's Willamette Valley or eastern Washington grassland lay virtually straight west from this lonely chunk of fertile land -- north central Nebraska.

The route west lay along the large, shallow, and curving North Platte River and its cousin the South Platte. It would lead explorers, fur seekers who eventually got rich if not dead, and bonnet-clad women and children to a hoped-for verdant land. Some 70,000 Mormons passed through on the way to religious freedom in Utah. Hardy gold-seekers turned north to the Dakotas to look for gold. They passed familiar landmarks that still loom today, such as the Courthouse and Jail Rocks, Chimney  Rock and Scott's Bluff on what became known as the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail, the Oregon-California cutoff, and became cursed, as well, by thirsty and hungry pilgrims.

I had the privilege of tracing the unusual charms and challenges of this unusual Nebraska just recently. I will bring you along in subsequent posts and pictures. Above is a pony express rider at Sidney, Alaska, where the 150th birthday of the colorful group was celebrated in 2010. Get your horse or your Conestoga in your mind and follow me. Yee Haw! JoAnn Roe, author of The Columbia River (Caxton Press, 2013)