When the County Filled Up

Dundy County Land Rush

Pure pandemonium is the only description fitting for the scene around the Burlington Depot. It was early summer, 1886, and the greatest land rush America had ever seen was under way. Land-hunting homesteaders by the thousands were moving west, taking the Burlington to the land where a $14 filing fee would pay for 160 acres of land that had never seen a plow. And, at the center of it all was Benkelman, Nebraska.

Down at the depot--overflowing past the boundaries of the freight yard--boxes, bundles, barrels, crates and cartons were piled as high as gravity would allow. Men, women and children slept under wagons every night because the hotels, livery barns and depot floor were filled to overflowing with a crush of landseekers hunting accommodations.

Only 18 month before, the stock pens had held 12,000 head of wild rangeland longhorns waiting shipment to market. Now the free range had been voted out forever and the stock pens were holding draft horses, flop-eared mules, milk cows, pigs and (the ultimate insult to cattlemen) a few goats.

Less than a year before, it had been big news when 20 freight wagons left one day with supplies for towns down south in Kansas and up north in Chase County. By spring of '86, there were 200 freight wagons a day rolling out of Benkelman. And Benkelman could no longer lay claim to being the only real town in Dundy County.

Southwest Nebraska Booms

At the Porter Store in Haigler, where four years earlier customers had been so rare they were invited to stay overnight to ease the loneliness of the storekeepers, 15 full-time clerks were struggling to handle the press of customers. Haigler was establishing daily stage service both north and south to connect with Bird City, Wano and Imperial.

Max and Ives were both up-and-coming communities, adding business places as buildings could be erected. On March 1, 1886, the population of Dundy County stood at 2,350 and the real boom was just beginning.

During the first week in March, an average of 15 families a day were unloading their freight cars at the Benkelman Depot. Within a few weeks the number passed 30 families a day, then 40 and more. At Max, Haigler and Ives, the boom was as great as at the county seat. Although the train was the principal form of transportation for land seekers, hundreds of others came by team and wagon. At Ives, 20 wagon loads of homesteaders from Iowa arrived in one day.

Not all who got off the train stayed in Dundy County. Many went south into Kansas and north into Chase County. In 1885, Kansas had been the preferred location outside Dundy County. In 1886, the direction was reversed and people were moving toward the north where promoters had started a town called Imperial. Others went to the area where another town was beginning near the Wauneta Falls on the Frenchman River. Still others headed toward the Hamilton area in Chase County.

North and south, every bit of supplies sent to the new towns outside Dundy County had to pass through Max, Benkelman, Ives or Haigler. The lifeblood of a region 100 miles north to south and 50 miles east to west flowed through one of the four Dundy County towns along the railroad.

Benkelman still retained the lead as a commercial center for the county. In March, the Pioneer proudly announced Benkelman had become such a thriving city that another bank was being built. The addition of another bank soon proved to be worth more than people anticipated, because on a warm July night, the cashier of the established Dundy County Bank boarded a train, never to be seen in Southwest Nebraska again. Packed away in his luggage was every cent in cash assets the bank owned.

Editor Israel also faced competition in the spring of '86. Although he didn't mention it in the Pioneer, the Benkelman News was being published in the county seat. And on March 11, E. S. Waite, a newspaperman from Nashua, Iowa, put out the first edition of the Haigler Reporter.

Short news clips from the March editions of the Pioneer indicate Dundy County was already losing its frontier status in 1886. Nineteen students were enrolled in the Max school, the paper stated, and Max boasted of a Literary Society, meetings and readings every Wednesday evening. In Benkelman, the Bon-Ton Billiard Hall was selling fresh fruit on a daily basis, and the Benkelman Cemetery had been fully surveyed and divided. Plots were available on a first-come, first-served basis. Max, Benkelman and Ives all had organized churches. Only Haigler did not hold regular religious services. "Haigler does have three good saloons, though," the Pioneer noted.

The boom under way in Southwest Nebraska was drawing the attention of many Eastern newspapers, adding to the growing number of people convinced the plains were undoubtedly the greatest place in the world to live. A reporter from Hastings, Nebraska, visited in March and his report was much copied throughout the United States in following weeks. The report assured readers the population of Dundy County would soon exceed 12,000.

New Post Offices

As the flood of newcomers began to flow northward from the railroad towns, new names began to appear on the lists of official post offices in Dundy County. The first of these, as reported in the Pioneer on February 18, was called Neel, with J. W. Neel as postmaster. In the same report the Pioneer added the important news that water had been struck in the Neel community, making it an advantageous location for settlement. Had Editor Israel known what a sharp thorn in the side of Benkelman the good people of the Neel community would soon become, he might very well have decided to ignore the new post office completely in the hope it would go away.
On March 11, two more post offices went on record. They were Ough, with John C. Ough as postmaster, and Jacobs, where Joshua R. Jacobs filled the postmaster position. All three were in the same general area along the plateau known as The Divide in the north part of the county.

J. C. Ough, County Developer

The Divide was the first part of Dundy County to be fully homesteaded after land near the railroad and rivers was taken. Except for a short burst of movement south into the Big Timber country of Kansas when a land promoter began circulating a rumor heavy deposits of coal had been discovered there in early '86, most people moved toward the choice land along The Divide. This concentration of population gave Ough the position of leadership among the communities springing up in the hinterlands.

Although not a wheeler-dealer type of promoter as most of his town-starting contemporaries were, John C. Ough was a solid, honest businessman and farmer who was interested in seeing the county develop. He was also one of the first homesteaders in the north part of Dundy County.

J. C. Ough, along with several other men, came west from Henry County, Illinois, in the summer of 1884 after hearing some of the first reports being put out in the Burlington publicity campaign. While nearly everyone else who came in '84 and '85 searched for a quarter section as near the railroad and river as possible, Ough displayed far more foresight by selecting 160 acres only a couple of miles from the north Dundy County line. Ough put the richness of soil above easy access to water and town.

Ough did not stay on his first visit. With a claim filed, he returned to Illinois to put his affairs in order and prepare to become a western homesteader. He returned in March of 1885 for good, unloading a freight carload of goods at Max. Ough had convinced several other Illinois farmers to move with him and together they built houses and barns, all sod.

Water--Problem On The Divide

The chief problem on The Divide was water, or rather the lack of it. At first, Ough hauled water from the Frenchman River, eight miles north. Needing water for his own use, and knowing the lack of proven water would hinder settlement, Ough set about putting in a well as soon as possible. His intention was to buy one of the new boring rigs to put in what was known as a tubular well. The boring rigs were supposed to drill through rock and the wooden sheath inserted as the well went down even made it possible to go through underground deposits of quicksand. Unable to find equipment to bore with, he finally hired a digging crew to do it the old-fashioned way. They shoveled to 240 feet before hitting water, but it proved to be a good well. After 1886, most people on The Divide hired James Dillingham, a professional with drilling equipment, to put in their wells. Dillingham used a drill powered by mules. Walking in an endless circle, hitched to a pole extended from the drill, mules or ox teams could drive a well nearly 300 feet.

At the same time the Ough Post office went in, the new postmaster opened a general store. It was an ideal location because 200 and more wagons a day were passing on the road by Ough. By the spring of 1886, Imperial, in Chase County, had become a full-fledged boom town. Until 1891, when a railroad branch line was built to Imperial, all supplies for that town and other Chase County settlements were freighted from Dundy County towns; especially Max and Benkelman. Because only one good ford existed across the Frenchman River in 1886, the road from Benkelman joined the branch from Max near Ough, then continued as one trail into Chase County. This road was several miles east of a direct route because of the ford location.

Ough was about a day of travel from Max, Benkelman and Imperial, making a natural overnight stopping point for traffic between Dundy and Chase County settlements. John Ough soon added a hotel and eating establishment to his general store and all prospered.
So heavy was the traffic along the road that John Ough went to Benkelman to petition the county commissioners to provide county maintenance of the trail. The commissioners were E. G. Neighbor, about whom little is known, and two prominent pioneers, Haigler founder J. R. Porter and Elmer Miller, first Benkelman resident and one of the few cattlemen who made the transition from ranching to farming. The commissioners agreed with Ough and the first major county road in Southwest Nebraska was established. Officially entered on the books as County Road Number Six, it would be known as the Ough Turnpike for the next 30 years.

Two new businesses were started at Ough which would add considerably to the importance of the community. A blacksmith named John Evans began to manufacture 16-inch breaking plows, using as raw material discarded iron wagon tires. The plows Evans made were considered far superior to those built in the east and an Evans plow became a prized piece of equipment on Southwest Nebraska homesteads.

The second business was actually located about two miles south of Ough. A craftsman named Zybia Schafer set up kilns and began the manufacture of bricks from prairie clay. Like Evans, Schafer was unable to keep up with the demand for his product.
By the end of summer in '86, Dundy County was nearly filled with people and all the good land was claimed. Only the sandhills in the northwest corner of the county remained open. Few homesteaders were willing to tackle the rolling, dry, barren sand piles which made up the terrain.

Previous: V. Out on the Lone Prarie
Continued in VII. The County Seat Battle