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 was the starting point fo r explorers and newcomers heading for Oregon and Washington, and riding the Columbia River to the ocean. The way there was eventful.
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