The
county of Gage is located
in the southern part of
the state of Nebraska, its
eastern boundary being approximately
fifty miles west of the
Missouri River. On
the north it is bounded
by Lancaster
County, on the east by Johnson
and Pawnee Counties, on
the south by the state of
Kansas,
and on the west by Jefferson
and Saline Counties. It
is a rectangular body of
land, thirty-six
miles long north and south
and twenty-four miles wide
from east to west. As
originally created
by the territorial assembly,
in 1855, it was twenty-four
miles square, in 1864, Clay
County,
which was also twenty-four
miles square, was divided
by the territorial assembly,
the south
half being attached to Gage
and the north half to Lancaster
County, giving Gage and Lancaster
their present dimensions.
The
county has an area of
nearly 864 square miles.
It has an average
elevation above sea level
of 1,200 feet.
The
Nemaha and the Big Blue
Rivers flow thru Gage County
and both are noted for their
wide and
fertile valleys. The
valleys are bounded by ranges
of low hills, beyond which
are the uplands,
formerly prairies.
There
are no mountains and no
hills of unusual size or
altitude in Gage County.
Its most noted elevation
is a round-topped hill on
the eastern boundary of
Riverside Township, a few
miles southeast
of Beatrice, locally known
as "Iron Mountain".
The
first actual settlers of
Gage County were the Otoe
and Missouri consolidated
tribes of Indians.
The treaty under which
all of their lands in the
territory of Nebraska were
ceded to the
United States, except their
reservation on the Big Blue
River was made March 15,
1854, required
them to remove to their
new reservation, which later
became Gage County.
The
first white men to enter
our county as far as we
have any reliable information,
were
George Heppner, Indian
agent for the Ote and Missouri
tribes of Indians,
in
1855; his successor in office,
William Wallace Dennison,
in 1859; and a few
employees
of the government.
On
July 4, 1857 was the christening
of the new city which the
Townsite Company
had
organized. The attending
members proceeded to celebrate
the national holiday,
and
this was the first fourth
of July celebration ever
held in Gage County.
Few
of the Townsite Company
remained in Beatrice during
the winter of 1857-1858.
The
enterprise, however, could
not be wholly abandoned
for even a short period
of
time without jeopardizing
the rights of the association
to the land selected as
a town site; moreover, as
the association had gone
through the form of organizing
the county, with Beatrice
as the county seat, it
was considered important
that some,
at
least, of the members of
the association, including
the county officials, should
remain
on guard. Finally
it was agreed that Albert
Towle, one of the county
commissioners, should bring
his family from Nebraska
City to Beatrice, and with
Bennett
Pike, Jefferson B. Weston,
Gilbert T. Loomis, M. W.
Ross, and Oliver
Townsend
occupy the company building.
During the long, cold
winter Ross died,
his
being the first death in
the county.
A
number of the company returned
during the spring and summer
of 1858, and
accessions
were made from home seekers,
such as Partick Burke, the
first black-
smith,
Ed Cartwright, the noted
fisherman, P. M. Favor and
others. A little of
the
prairie on the nearby claims
of members of the company
was broken and
planted
to corn, melons and vegetables
and when the second winter
came,
plenty
smiled on every hand.
Transition
from a few covered wagons
and a tent, from "Pap's
Cabin" and a
saw
mill, in 1857, to a modern
city of approximately twelve
thousand
inhabitants
in 1918, was of course painfully
slow.
At
Beatrice the only tangible
asset of any value possessed
by the Townsite
Company
was the steam saw mill purchased
in Omaha in May, 1857, and
even
this
mill at first figured as
a liability. For sometime
this old steam mill was
a
source
of worry to the members
of the association, and
possibly of some contention.
The
chief difficulty apparently
was to find some one competent
to set up and
run
it, but by the beginning
of 1858 it was in effective
operation.
When
Fordyce Roper, in 1861,
erected the first flour
mill at Beatrice and placed
a
dam across the river by
which to obtain power for
his enterprise, he either
purchased
or leased the old steam
saw mill from the townsite
company and
changed
it to a water-driven mill.
He operated it in
connection with his flouring
mill
until 1869, when William
E. Hill, of Nebraska City,
opened a lumber yard
and
placed it in charge of William
Survoss. This soon
put an end to the old saw
mill
of pioneer days.
As
already noted, the first
building erected in Beatrice
was the company house, which
afterward
became widely and favorably
known as "Pap's Cabin."
When the
association
adjourned in Omaha on May
21stk to meet in Beatrice,
July 27, 1857,
the members
of the association made
their way to the town site
in June, and
immediately
began the erection of this
building. It was located
on the original
town
plat as block forty-six,
a block which is now entirely
owned and occupied
by
the Chicago, Burlington
& Quincy Railroad Company
as a site for its passenger
depot.
After
Mr. Towle moved his family
to Beatrice, in the autumn
of 1857, this
building,
which had been partly completed,
was donated to him as a
residence
and
was occupied by this genial
and influential citizen
as a family residence,
postoffice,
court room, village inn,
election booth, and a the
general meeting place
for
the entire community, until
1867, when it was sold to
Job Buchanan, by whom
it
was eventually transferred
to the Burlington Railroad
Company.
The
second building erected
in the hamlet of Beatrice
was Isma Mumford's
residence
and hotel building.
Beginning
with 1858, a number of buildings
were erected, some log,
some slab
and
some of sawed timber. Among
the residents were, Orr
Stevenson, Dr. Reynolds,
Oliver
Townsend, and Patrick Burke.
In September, 1859,
it was a mere huddle
of
log and slab shanties, with
scarcely an effort toward
a building of any pretensions.
Aside
from "Pap's Cabin"
and the Mumford building,
the most pretentious
structure
was the shed that housed
the steam engine at the
mill. Beatrice did
not
contain
to exceed fifty actual residents
all told.
In
August, 1859, the townsite
company raised a thousand
dollars to enable
Dr.
Reynolds, as mayor of the
town, to enter the half
section of land comprising
the
original
town of Beatrice, and to
pay the expenses attending
the surveying and
platting
of the town site. On
September 12, 1859, a certified
copy of the plat
was
filed in the government
land office at Brownvill
and the entry and purchase
of
the land allowed. Thereafter
patent was issued to Dr.
Reynolds as mayor and
trustee
of the townsite company,
and deeds and other conveyances
of the lots
could
then be made. As far
as a mere paper town site
goes, Beatrice from that
moment
had existence.
