48	The History of Platte County Nebraska

ized and incorporated in 1885 by Leander Gerrard, J. P. Becker, C. E. Morse, John Stauffer and J. R. Meagher. A newspaper story of the following year had this to report:

"The City Council, at a meeting Saturday night, agreed to allow the waste water from the stand pipe, on the test of the waterworks, to be turned into the lake belonging to the Lake and Park Association, provided there is no extra expense to the city."

A few weeks later, in the presence of the mayor, the city council, fire department and most of the citizens of Columbus, the new waterworks system was partially tested under the supervision of Engineer J. E. House of Omaha. It proved to be "entirely satisfactory" and less than two weeks later the new system was used to extinguish a fire for the first time. The blaze was in the farm home of A. Luth in the western part of Columbus. The Hook and Ladder Company went into action at once and reported the new waterworks an immediate success. The contract price of the waterworks system was $20,350.

SEWERAGE AND DRAINAGE

The problems of a growing community are not always exciting or dramatic problems but most frequently they concern the health and welfare of those who make the town their home. Sewers were unknown both in frontier days and in the early settlement years when people began to live closer together for protection and for the purpose of engaging in commerce with one another. However, the time came, in 1891, when the Columbus Sewerage and Drainage Company was organized to meet a very real civic need. This firm was committed to construct and maintain sewers and drains for the city of Columbus and it was followed, in 1898, by the incorporation of the West End Sewer Company by C. J. Garlow, J. O. Reeder, Theodore Friedhof, R. H. Henry, O. T. Roen and Gus G. Becher.

The following year, in 1892, a similar business was established for their Franciscan community by three sisters from St. Mary's Hospital. The Columbus East End Sewer Company was the corporate name of the business entered into by Sister Henrica Stinn, Sister Eustochium Schroeder and Sister Fulgentia Frisch and officially registered in the Platte County Court House on March 8, 1899.

POSTAL SERVICE

Meanwhile, the town of Columbus had advanced considerably from the sparse little settlement which had cheered the arrival of the first mail coach from Omaha on July 4, 1857. That day marked the first official recognition of Columbus as an entity by the distant powers of the United States Post Office Department. Although the Columbus postal station soon outgrew the log cabin store maintained by postmaster F. G. Becher and his father, Gus G. Becher, Sr., the government continued successively to occupy quarters in various local buildings which were owned or rented by the postmasters and, later, leased by the government.

It was not until December 2, 1911, that the present post office building was erected by the federal government at a cost of $65,000 on a site valued at $5,000. The postmasters who served Columbus during almost the first ninety-threeyears of its existence, and the dates of their commissions, were:

John Rickly, January 6, 1857 F. G. Becher, June 2, 1858 John Reck, December 5, 1862 J. P. Becker, May 11, 1863 H. J. Hudson, November 25, 1864 O. B. T. Williams, April 13, 1866 Bishop B. Kelley, a short time in 1867 Hugh Compton, October 27, 1867 J. G. Compton, October 26, 1875 L. M. Saley, July 18, 1877 E. A. Gerrard, March 18, 1878 H. J. Hudson, February 7, 1883 W. N. Hensley, October 5, 1885 Carl Kramer, August 29, 1889 D. Frank Davis, November 1, 1893 Carl Kramer, June 15, 1897 W. A. McAllister, January 13, 1911 S. E. Marty, April 4, 1915 H. B. Reed, March 17, 1921 William Stubblefield, July 30, 1921 F. A. Scofield, January 23, 1922 C. J. Carrig, July 19, 1934 and E. C. Kavanaugh from August 31, 1940.

In the early beginnings of the postal service in Columbus, the postmaster's "fund of revenue" consisted of sixty percent of the sale of stamps. Pony express routes and stage coach mail deliveries were the only way Platte County citizens had of maintaining their contact with the out-

The Makings of A Community	49

Mrs. Ruth Kenyon and her mail wagon, taken many years ago in front of the old livery born and millinery shop in Monroe.

"We met Michael Walsh with one passenger on Friday last, making his first trip to Stanton on the new mail route. Michael allowed he had about four hundred pounds of mail aboard."

Luther North rode for the local pony express for a time on the Columbus-to-Monroe route which followed the Mormon Trail to the old Pat Murray farm and then reached out across the prairie to outlying settlements. On one occasion North reported encountering a band of three thousand Indians led by Baptiste, a noted half-breed Indian chief. The redskins were bound for a reservation and behaved in a friendly manner toward him.

Although the pony express riders were paid relatively little for their arduous and even dangerous work and the job of postmaster was not a particularly rewarding one (before stage coach service was initiated, the Columbus postmaster had to drive into Omaha and pick up the mail before he could deliver it), it nonetheless constituted a vital part of the community life that was springing up all over the valley of the Platte. For several years a chain of "inland" postoffices was in existence, scattered throughout the towns and townships in the northern and western sections of the county. The free rural mail and parcel post delivery system was not established for many years and these post offices, or rural stations, served a very real need.

Here men gathered to discuss the news of the rest of the state and the country. They received their land patents and their legal and financial papers in these country stations which many times served as the only source of human contact highlighting seasons of near-isolation.

John F. Graf

Almost thirty such settlements received their mail in this way. Among them were: Boheet, Postville, Neboville, Palestine, President and West Hill. No longer in existence but remembered by all who lived in the region in the early days of Platte County, were Woodburn, Hill Siding, O'Kay, Oldenbusch, and Rosenburg. A survey of the city of Columbus in 1880 revealed many things about the town that marked it as a community of eager and ambitious men, anxious to become a part of that great community of cities which was beginning to reach out across the prairie into the unexplored regions of the West.

PROGRESS

In that year the post office was open from eleven to twelve o'clock in the morning and from half past four to six P. M.; and the following businesses give us a clue as to the relative development of Columbus and its social mood in that period.

H. J. Hudson was the local notary public and there was a photographer, Mrs. S. A. Gosselyn, operating on East Eleventh Street south of the railroad tracks. John Huber conducted a stage route, carrying the mail from Columbus to Albion. Rates for one-way passage to Albion were two dollars. There were manufacturers and wholesale dealers in flour and meal who had offices in town as well as out in the country at the Shell Creek Mills. And, in 1880, the Columbus State Bank had a capital stock of fifty thousand dollars.

I. Gluck owned the Revolution Dry Goods Store in Columbus and there was another emporium, the New York Cash Store, operated by Louis Kramer, a brother of Carl Kramer. Other businesses peculiar to the nineteenth century were represented by Charles and Louis Schroeder's buggy and wagon building establishment and Luers and Schreiber's, blacksmiths. E. C. Hockenberger was a clerk in the office of the Union Pacific Railroad and considered of great value there because he could speak German, a language frequently heard in the streets of Columbus during those years.

Henry Gass, who also sold furniture, was a manufacturer of wooden caskets, and Columbus was large enough by that time to require the

50	The History of Platte County Nebraska

services of at least two surgeons --- Doctor E. L. Siggins and Doctor Bonesteel, the United States examining surgeon.

Insulated though it was in the heart of the North American continent, the people of Columbus were even then cognizant of the humanitarian problems of the rest of the world. On January 21st of that year, the newspaper reported a meeting held by the citizens at the Opera House "to discuss the suffering and oppressions of the people of Ireland." Funds were collected to aid the Irish and a committee appointed to carry on this early relief work.

National issues also received their share of local attention. "Should ex-confederate officers be debarred from holding office in the U. S. Congress?" was the subject of a debate staged by the Wattsville Literary Society. Debaters for the affirmative were: F. Jewell, L. H. Jewell, J. H. Sacrider and Mrs. West. Opposing their view were: H. C. Magoon, E. Moncrief, J. H. Watts and Mrs. Miller, for the negative.

But progress, in spite of the backward looks, continued to thrust Columbus into the forefront where its municipal importance was concerned. The county seat of Platte County was preparing during these years for the role it would later play as a key center and the hub of one of the richest agricultural regions of the middle west.

FIRST TELEPHONE 1883

On the last day of December, 1880, a representative of the Nebraska Telephone Company arrived in town to determine whether the citizens of Columbus were sufficiently interested in telephone communication to warrant the installation of a line in the community. Three years later, on August 4, 1883, an ordinance was approved granting right of way to the company and Columbus was connected by one more arterial with the rest of the United States.

An early street scene, taken at the corner of Thirteenth Street and Twenty-sixth Avenue. The barber shop and bath house are on the corner where the Woolworth Store is now located.

BRANCH RAILROADS

Railroads, however, were of prime importance to every man and woman who eked out a living in the little prairie town. The date, June 16, 1881, saw the completion of the branch railroad, O. N. & B. H.* into Columbus with free rides given to the people who lived along the lines between Albion, Norfolk and Columbus. On that day, the Platte County seat did her best to entertain the hundreds of neighboring townsmen who flocked in from farms and outlying villages. Albion alone sent eight hundred people to the celebration.

Although many settlers still had all they could do to work their claims and make a living for their own families, the more venturesome business-minded leaders of the community had begun to think in terms of exporting live stock and produce to Omaha, Chicago and other nearby markets. The famous twentieth century phrase, "the bread-basket of the world," was yet to be coined but it was more than apparent that once Platte County had filled the needs of its own citizens, it would be welcome to engage in commerce with the rest of consumer America.

In October, 1881, the first pork packing company was organized in Columbus. Located one mile east of town, between the Union Pacific and the B. & M. railroads, the firm found it possible to slaughter eight thousand sixty hogs during the first few months of operation. John Wiggins, David Anderson, S. C. Corry, R. H. Henry and Leander Gerrard spearheaded the early industrial effort.

Only a few weeks after the establishment of the packing house, the Columbus Creamery Company was organized as the logical outgrowth of a country which produced some of the finest dairy products anywhere in the middle west. Two acres of land between the D. Ander-

---