|
The population of Gove county fell away half in the big drouth, and the fields began to go back to the primitive sod. The legislature of 1881 took the county away from Ellis county and attached it to Trego. The year 1881 saw the death of all the county papers; the Grainfield Republican breathed its last in January; the Buffalo Park Express went under in August. In June J. G. Coutant & Sons started the Golden Belt Advance at Grainfield but it gave up the struggle in October, and with its death the newspaper history of Gove county closes for four years. At the first national election held in Gove county, in 1880, a total of 158 votes were cast. For president the vote was Garfield, Republican, 101; Hancock, Democrat, 40; Weaver, Greenbacker, 17. The vote for governor was St. John. Republican. 102; Ross, Democrat, 40; Vrooman. Greenbacker, 15. The vote on the prohibition amendment to the constitution was 88 for and 45 against. The county administered its own affairs as a township of Trego county, and every election resolved itself into a contest between Grainfield and Buffalo Park. Buffalo Park was the voting precinct and its faction was generally the stronger. At the election of 1881 Buffalo Park won by a vote of about 100 to 56 all round. E. C. Baker was elected trustee without opposition; Frank Sharp beat his Grainfield opponent for road overseer by 103 to 5 5. In 1882 L. H. Lassel beat George Platz for trustee 50 to 48; Frank Sharp and F. S. Adams were elected justices of the peace. F. W. ("Fred") Martin started a contest against Adams on the ground that he had a homestead in Sheridan county and was only residing in Gove county to escape taxation on his cattle, but Adams beat the contest by giving up his homestead and announcing himself a citizen of Gove county for keeps. So little was the value placed on land in the west in those days! George Platz was elected trustee in 1883. In 1884 Platz and D. L. Greenfield were rival candidates for trustee; Platz was elected on the face of the returns but the election was contested and the matter carried before the Trego county commissioners at WaKeeney who decided in favor of Greenfield. Some one claimed to have made the discovery at this time that by a decision of the supreme court Gove county had not been properly attached to Trego and was consequently a sort of No Man's Land and all its official acts were illegal. However, no great issues hinged on the matter and no great harm was done. The hostility between the Buffalo Park and Grainfield factions caused a split in the Republican party in 1880, each faction holding a convention and sending a different set of delegates to the state and district conventions. The rivalry of the two towns shows up in the correspondence in the WaKeeney paper after Gove county's papers ceased to exist. Nov. 5, 1881, the Buffalo Park correspondent boasts thus of his town: "Four good stores in the town only hardware store in the county the only money order office and the only railroad
well the first sermon ever preached in the county' was here-first church, Congregational, was here the first school taught and first school house in the county worthy of the name was built at Buffalo Park the U. P. railroad has here the only stock yards in the county." Next week the Grainfield correspondent comes back with the following: "The professions are represented here by two ministers, Presbyterian and Methodist, one physician and one lawyer. The Presbyterians have a church building paid for and we have two terms of school a year. The county is unorganized as yet and we have no taxes to pay; but when it is organized Grainfield will be the county seat." Decoration Day was celebrated at Grainfield in 1882. There was but one soldier's grave to decorate, that of Chas. A. Nichols who had died at Grainfield while on a visit to relatives there. About five hundred were present, of whom seventy five were ex-soldiers. Fred Martin was chairman and C. M. Burr acted as Officer of the Day. Buffalo Park celebrated the Fourth of July in 1883.
J. J. Dixon of Bunker Hill delivered the oration of the day and David Ritchie (now a prominent lawyer of Salina)
read the Declaration of Independence. The baseball game between Buffalo Park and Bunker Hill resulted 40 to 22
in favor of Buffalo Park. Even in those days Gove county had a champion baseball team. The "dead line" as established by the legislature of 1879, beginning at the boundary of the Indian Territory, ran up along the east side of Clark and Ford counties to the Arkansas river, thence west along the river to Dodge City, and thence along the east side of Finney, Lane, Gove, Sheridan and Rawlins counties to the Nebraska line; no driving was allowed east of this line. The effect of this regulation was to direct the stream of cattle to Dodge. Here some of them were shipped to eastern markets over the Santa Fe road, and those destined for more northern points continued on their way up the trail. The Santa Fe and Union Pacific were then the only railroads in the country and after leaving Dodge no settlements were met with till the neighborhood of Buffalo. Park was reached. The trail entered Gove Co. 6 miles west of the southeast corner of the county and struck across country in a direction slightly west of north, to Buffalo Park. The old trail can still be traced for a part of its course across the county, wherever it has not been obliterated by the plow; it Page 19 is particularly plain just south of the Hackberry where it sweeps by the base of Round Top. The cattle were driven in herds numbering hundreds or sometimes several thousands. At the camping places along the streams they were allowed to scatter out and graze, but on the march tney were strung out by the drovers in a long thin line. Land marks were set up where necessary to mark the trail. The Buffalo Park Express, June 3, 1880, had the following mention of the trail: "The right of way has been obtained from the settlers over their claims, and a new cattle trail marked out with two furrows about two hundred feet apart all the way through the settlements in Gove county. The new trail is very near the old one, has better crossings on the creeks, and is shorter than the old trail. Soon after crossing the Hackberry coming northward you strike the new trail which crosses the old one three times before arriving at Big Creek and thence you have a perfectly straight route between the furrows for five miles over smooth level ground to the stock yards in Buffalo." The number of cattle that traveled the trail can only be conjec-tured. We *have the figures for one season only. The editor of the Express kept a partial record for 1880. In one day of that year 11,600 head arrived at Buffalo Park. Thirty thousand came in one week. By July 8 the arrivals numbered 89.220; by August 5 there were 165,220. After this date no more figures were given, but as the run of range cattle usually continues till fall it is evident the record is far from complete. The cattle did not all come to Buffalo Park; some herds crossed the railroad near Grainfield and Grinnell, and it is probably conservative enough to es-timate that a quarter of a million head of Texas cattle passed through Gove county during the one season of 1880. Some of the cattle were shipped from the stock yards at Buffalo Park to the east or to the west, but most of the herds were driven on, to find their final stopping point in Nebraska or the territories of the northwest. The cattle moved leisurely, sometimes taking weeks for the trip, and often making long stops when the grass was good and water abundant. Some of the herds were known as "time herds," because they had been bought by the government to furnish rations for the Indians on the reservations and were under contract to be delivered at their destination by a certain time. The cattle drive soon became unpopular in Gove
county for the same reasons that had caused it to be outlawed in the older counties. The cattle destroyed the crops
of the settlers, who could collect no damages. It was charged that the cattle brought disease into the country.
The cowboys went on sprees at Buffalo Park and Grainfield and once "shot up" the town of Grinnell; the
cowboys got the worst of this affray (June, 1880) the net result being one cowboy killed and one citizen wounded. At different times between 1878 and 1886 the following post offices were established in Gove county: Willow, Lulie, Locket, Tiffany, Hackberry, Sarah, St. Sophia, Mahan, Sloey. Hackberry. (The latter was not the present office of that name, but another one in the western part of the county.) These posts were generally short lived and unimportant and a history of them would be hard to obtain. The State Board of Agriculture first recognized Gove county in its reports in 1881. That year it was reported as having a population of 650, with 3.2 4 3 acres under cultivation, Page 20 54G of which was wheat and I,CT0 was corn. Horses and mules, numbered 200, milk cows 311, other cattle 2,594, sheep 4,760. In the report of 1884 the population is put at 700 and the principal industry as stock raising, but no figures are given. In 1885 the population was 595, number of horses 444, milk cows 194, other cattle 7,8,55, sheep 5,167. But now for a few years the development of the country and its resources was to be in the hands of the cattle men. Such farming as was done was carried on in the northern part of the county near the railroad. The Shoen brothers ran a sheep ranch on the North Hackberry, but the whole southern part of the county was a void till the cattle men began to take possession. These cattle men met in the fall of 1882 and organized the Smoky Hill Cattle Pool. The Pool was similar to other cattlemen's organizations then existing everywhere in the range country. Each member had his own cattle and his own brand, but the cattle all ran together on a common rang and were "rounded up" once a year. The organization had its officers and con-stitution, it hired range riders and other employes and incurred other necessary expenses which were met by assessments on the members according to the number of cattle each one had in the pool. The territory claimed by_ the Smoky Hill Cattle Pool was thirty miles along the Smoky and about twelve miles each way from it north and south, though this territory varied in extent at different times. The principal watering-places for the cattle were on the river, but drinking places were also maintained at the old Grannal Spring and Indian Spring on Indian creek and at various other places within the territory claimed by the Pool. The Pool was organized in August 1882 at Farnsworth postoffice in Lane county. The first officers were S. S. Evans president, W. A. Sternberg secretary and treasurer, Noah Chenoweth and J. W. Felch directors. The Pool headquarters were at Farnsworth at first, but as its membership grew and its territory extended its headquarters were changed to Grainfield and E. A. McMath of that place was made secretary and treasurer. The membership of the Pool was never very large; it seems to have been its policy to keep the membership small and not overstock the range. At the time of the organization of the Pool there were the following cow camps along the Smoky in Gove county from east to west: Felch, Evans, McCafferty & Swartz, Bowman Brothers and Sternberg. Bowman Bros, held their cattle on the site of old Fort Monument on the Butter-field Trail. Each member of the Pool advertised his brand in the Kansas. Cowboy at Dodge City, and these ads. filled a whoie column of that publication. Here are the names of the advertisers, which probably constitutes nearly a full list of the membership* of the Smoky Hill Cattle Pool at the time of its greatest prosperity: S. S. Evans, John W. Felch, Frank McCafferty, Sylvester Swartz, E. M. Prindle, Samuel Bowman, George Bowman, Rochester Land & Cattle Co. (W. A. Sternberg, Sup't), Wni. Leni-han, Robert Hickman, James Rider. Frank Davis, John Mueller, N. Chenoweth, Curtis & Campbell, J. J. Baker, E. A. McMath. When organized the pool represented about five thousand head of cattle. This number increased till it was estimated at fifteen thousand head in 1884. The Pool was prosperous. At the end of its first year, in the fall of 1883, it g:ave out a report showing that the expense for keeping- the cattle had been but twelve and one half cents a head per month. Fifteen hundred calves were branded that year and the number of cattle in the Pool had increased to more than. eight thousand. A contract was let to build a drift fence forty eight miles long on the south and east sides of the range. This fence was a substantial affair with galvanized wire and oak posts. Joshua Wheat-croft of Lane county was given the-contract to build the fence. The fence proved its worth. In the spring of '84 it was ann.ounced that the cattle were badly scattered by storms but that the fence had held them on the range and kept them from drifting- away. Losses had not been heavy, though the cattle had been subsisting entirely on grass-There was fear that the range would be overstocked. Members were complaining that a "carpet bag" outfit was preparing to move in on the-range to take advantage, without paying, of the accommodations af- Page 21 forded by the Pool. The Pool this spring bought 140 high grade Shorthorn animals for breeding purposes and allotted them among the members. Fifteen hundred Pool calves were branded in 1884. The calf crop was smaller than expected. (Wonder if the fact that the cows had been "scattered by storms" and "subsisted entirely on grass" had anything to do with this?) It was stated that some of the cattlemen were putting up windmills on fresh ranges. A new pool was formed this fall in the southeast corner of Gove county, known as the Forrester Pool. The headquarters of the Forrester Pool were at the Forrester ranch at the big spring north of the Smoky now owned by Dave Bollinger. An irrigation expert from the state agricultural college once inspected this spring and estimated that it has a flow sufficient to irrigate ten acres of ground. The pool had twenty miles of fence and four thousand head of cattle; its members were Forrester Bros., Kellerman Bros., I. P. Olive, Joseph Gotier, E. R. Moffit and Joseph Middleby. This man Olive was an old time cattleman with a history. A native of Texas, a Confederate soldier, wounded at Shiloh, captured at Vicksburg, he had been obliged to leave Texas for cause, after the war. Settling next in Custer county, Nebraska, he took part in a war between cattleman and settlers and was leader of a party which lynched a couple settlers in 1878. For this crime he served a term in the Nebraska penitentiary. The details of this affair are given at considerable length in S. D. Butcher's "History of Custer County." Olive's conduct in Gove county seems not to have been such as to get him into trouble, but a couple years after finally leaving Kansas he died with his boots on in Colorado, being shot by a man who it was said had followed him clear from Texas to get him. Prosperity continued in 1885. At the first calf round up two thousand head were branded; the calf crop was estimated at three thousand for the season. "Jack" Thomas makes his first appearance in Gove county history; he is hired to 'ride the line" and keep the cattle from bothering the settlers on the Hackberry. During the season seventy four car loads of cattle were shipped from Buffalo Park, forty seven of them going in the month of October. The winter of 1885-86 put the finishing touches on the Smoky Hill Cattle Pool. It was the hardest winter that western Kansas had ever known. The cold was long continued and intense, with frequent blizzards and the ground covered with snow; and without either feed or shelter only the strongest of the cattle could survive. Human lives were lost likewise in the storms of this winter. August Johnson, one of the Pool cowboys, was frozen to death on Salt Creek in January. After this storm in January newspaper reports esti-mated that there were ten thousand dead cattle in western Kansas between Garden City and the White Woman. Many cattle which survived the winter storms were so weakened that they died in the spring. The cattlemen held their last meeting at Grainfield in the spring of 1886. Grainfield had another paper then, the Cap Sheaf, and from it we take the following account of the meeting: "The regular semi-annual meeting of the Smoky Hill Cattle Pool was held at Grainfield on Monday, April 5. Besides the regular routine of business important action was taken toward the winding up of the association. The directors were instructed to take immediate steps to remove and dispose of the wire fence erected by the Pool three years ago. They were also authorized to prosecute any person found stealing posts or wire. "The following action was taken relating to the general round up: "Whereas, the cattle owned and controiled by the members of this Pool are, on account of the unsually severe winter and late spring, in a much weaker condition than usual at this season, therefore be it "Resolved, that the general round up shall commence upon our Pool range June 1st, 1886, and as a matter of self protection no rounding up of the cattle on the range prior to that date will, under any circumstances, be permitted. "Resolved, that the secretary be instructed to notify secretaries of interested stock associations of the date fixed for said round up and tht a copy of this resolution be published in the Grainfield Cap Sheaf for the Page 22 information and guidance of local stock men. "On comparing notes and opinions among the stock men assembled here this week it seems to be the unanimous conclusion that the range cattle business in this country is played out, we are getting too much rain in summer and too much snow in winter. "To be sure, the hide business has been extremely good this spring, but it does not pay to raise cattle just for the hides. Stockmen also recognize the fact that the farmer has come to stay, and there is no disposition to contest the territory. They have been slow to admit but now fully recognize the climatic change which this region is undergoing. They "cuss" the country because it is too wet for the successful raising of stock on the open range system. They will move on west or else hold in smaller bunches, close herd and feed. There will be no issue between the stock men and the grangers "Newcomers who are inquiring about the rainfall need no stronger evidence than this of the climatic changes that are taking place in this region." The fence belonging to the Pool was bought by T. L. Smith for his ranch at Goodwater. The number-of cattle found at this round up is not given, but the Cap Sheaf said "The loss on the range for the three yeairs last past has been from sixty to eighty per cent, of the book count. The storm the first of April killed more cattle than all the other storms during the three years previous." The raising of cattle on the open range system of "making them rustle" had proved a costly failure. The cattle men could not change their ways and stay in the county under new conditions. Of those prominent in the Smoky Hill Cattle Pool only McMath, Baker and Prindle ever cut any figure in the subsequent history of Gove county. One more incident in the history of the Smoky Hill
Cattle Pool remains to be written. In July, 1886, the members of that organization and the Forrester Pool were
arrested by the U. S. marshal on the charge of fencing government land. They were uefended by Lee Monroe and E.
A. McMath. In the days of their prosperity the members of the Pool had felt and expressed some indignation he cattlemen were merely making a virtue of necessity in giving way to the settlers. The country was public land, open to settlement by anybody, and railroad land. The cattlemen owned none of it; they were merely squatters. A wave of eastern immigration was once more flooding Kansas, and the cattlemen could not have held their ground for another season. Kansas grew up, so to speak, in the eighties. During that decade her vacant lands were taken up, her railroads built, her cities established, and the state settled down to permanent conditions generally. Gove county had lain dormant for several years but was now to receive its share of the new life which was flooding the plains. During 1885 and 1886 three new towns and five newspapers were established, and Gove county changed from a cattle range to an organized county of more than three thousand souls. The boom began to develop in the spring of 1885. Among the first boomers was E. A. Benson of Davenport, Iowa, who bought 250 sections of the railroad lands in Gove and Sheridan counties. Later he sold 110,000 acres of these lands to C. E. Perkins, president of the C. B. & Q railroad "and associates in Boston." Mr. Benson long since disposed of his holdings, but the Gove County Atlas, published in 1907, shows that as late as that date Mr. Perkins still held 8,800 acres of land in the county. Benson and Perkins put their lands on the market and began a systematic advertising campaign to attract purchasers. Of course in a county Page 23 where more than half the land was still public land it was natural that the homesteads would be taken up much faster than the railroad lands. Besides the land open to entry there were many homesteads that had.been taken in 1878 or later and afterward abandoned, and these could be obtained by contest proceedings. Gove county had been without a newspaper for four years when A. W. Burnett began the publication of the Pioneer at Buffalo Park, April 16, 1885. The Pioneer had considerab.e advertising patronage and five columns of land contest notices. The law requires that every contest or final proof notice must be published, and it was chiefly upon this patronage that the frontier newspaper lived in the homestead days. Two more newspapers made their appearance in 1885-the Golden Belt at Grinnell, first published July 18, and the Cap Sheaf at Grainfield, first published October 8. Each is well filled with land contest notices. The towns are doing a brisk business. Each of the county papers teems with items of new settlers arriving or new homeseekers making purchases. The first issue of the Cap Sheaf says "J. B. Beal is credited with saying four years ago that 'anyone that would lariat the town and brand it could have it.' John is now putting up houses to rent and we don't believe he ever said it." Somebody started a petition to have the government take down the Pool fence. Buffalo Park had a two day celebration July 3 and 4, 1885, the chief event of the celebration being that the Buffalo Blues beat the Russell nine one day and WaKeeney the next. It is evident that the Biues were a good team. They took a couple trips down the road and beat WaKeeney, Hays and Russell on their own grounds. They published a challenge to any team west of Topeka to play them a game on the Buffalo Park grounds for $100 a side-and no takers. The membership of this championship team of thirty four years ago included T. B. Sloey catcher, Jack Thomas pitcher, Lew Thomas short stop, Fredenburg first base, E. S. Wilson second base, Jim Sloey third base and captain Bill Sloey left field, F. B. Strong center field and manager, Chas. Campbell right field. Of this band three-F. B. Strong and theThomas brothers still live in Gove county.* The business done by the railroad company is one indication of the way Gove county was now growing. The receipts at Buffalo Park for August '85, were $1239.78; for September, $1990.12; October, $1837.50. Grain-field did a still larger business. The receipts there were in October '84, $767.66, in October '85, $4282.37; in November '84, $1511.03, in November '85, $4059.06. In November, 1885, two new towns were established in the county. The railroad company had for several years had a switch seven miles southeast of Buffalo Park at a place it called Melota, but no station had been established. Here in November the town of Familton was platted by the Familton Town Co. The company built a two story frame hotel, the Familton Hotel, in the fall of 1885, but no other buildings were erected till the following spring. The government refused to establish a postoffice under the name selected for the town, because the name was too much like some other offices in the state in sound or spelling, so the name Familton had to be given up and another name selected. The town was finally called Quinter, after Rev. James Quinter of Huntingdon, Pa., an elder of the Dunkard or Baptist Brethren church. A strong settlement of the Brethren was forming around the town, which caused the name to be chosen. The Gove City Improvement Co. was organized at Davenport, Iowa, by E. A. Benson, H. H. Benson, C. E. Perkins and others. It acquired land on the Hackberry twelve miles south of Grainfield and here in November, 1885, laid out the town of Gove City. The town was off the line of the railroad but was near the center of the county (three miles due north of the exact center), and the promoters made no secret of the fact that Gove City would be a candidate for the county seat. The first building erected was a two story hotel of stone, the Benson House, begun in November and completed the following- spring. The town of Jerome was founded on the Smoky in 1886 and in July of that year could boast of two general stores, blacksmith shop, restaurant and livery stable and had taken *Note 6 Page 24 steps toward building a school house. The winter the hardest ever known for years, the winter which broke up the Smoky Hill Cattle Pool and strewed the prairie with the carcasses of dead cattle^-put a stop to the boom but the rush was resumed stronger than ever in the spring of '86. Two new papers appeared, the Gazette at Gove City in April and the Settlers Guide at Quinter in July. A strong Swedish settlement was being built up in the southwest part of the county. On one day in March the receipts of the Grainfield station were $1100, the remittances $700. Twenty five car loads of freight were received at Buffalo Park in one day in April, while at Grainfield fifty eight car loads of merchandise and emigrant goods arrived in one April day; the track would not hold so many, and some of the cars had to be carried on that day to Grinnell. The "prairies were dotted with schooners", "emigrants coming in by hundreds". In April the Gazette estimated that new settlers were arriving at the rate of fifty a day. Men stood in line for days at the land office at WaKeeney awaiting their turn to file on their claims. A new slang term was coined any concern which had all it could do, or more, was said to be "doing a land office business." In spite of the rush the country found time for recreation. The first circus visited the county, showing at Buffalo Park and at Grinnell; the newspaper accounts said it was a fraud, and the outfit got away with-out paying its hotel and printing bills. Decoration Day was observed at Grainfield, the G. A. R. . posts of Grainfield and Buffalo Park participating. H. H. Benson delivered the oration of the day. Buffalo Park and Grainfield both wanted to celebrate the fourth of July. The day fell on Sunday, so Buffalo Park held its celebration on the 3rd and Grainfield on the 5th. H. H. Benson was orator of the day at Buffalo Park. The Ellsworth band furnished the music and there were horse races and a ball game. The Blues met with a set back, being defeated by Ellis 18 to 15. Grainfield had a pigeon shoot and fire works and an oration by Rev. Aller. A prize of $50 was hung up for the ball game between Buffalo Park.and WaKeeney. The Blues took the game, 13 to 8, and it was said about $800 changed hands on the result. The papers estimated that there were fifteen hundred people in Grainfield that day. Page 25 |
back to Index Page
Copyright © 2008 to Kansas Genealogy Trails' Gove County host
& all Contributors
All rights reserved