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The Loup River Bridge, completed in 1933

lumbus, was honored by the nation as a whole when Hensley Field near Dallas, Texas, was named after him. At one time the only airport in the country devoted exclusively to the training of reserve fliers, the field was dedicated to Colonel Hensley, former assistant to one of the most famous and tragic figures in America's armed services, General Billy Mitchell.

Although he died in 1928, Colonel Hensley was a firm advocate of air power in an age when leading statesmen and even military officials deprecated its importance. He repeatedly stressed the need of a greater air fighting fleet, taking the position that the next war would be won by those armies whose air strength was the greatest. His former associates in Columbus followed his career with the keen interest of those who realize that only from a community of vision and forward-moving forces can come a man whose own vision places him in the vanguard of his country.

THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE

Just as the geography of an area often determines its history, so does the instinct of growth stem from the conditions with which any town is naturally endowed. One of these conditions which was favorable in Platte County was climate. As Martha Turner, a student of the history of Nebraska, once wrote: "Columbus and vicinity . . . will continue to prove that where two great rivers meet in a country able to produce all that man needs to sustain life, just so in proportion can that community rise above her less fortunate neighbor."

PROGRESS

It is difficult to get a whole picture, a panoramic view, of the progress of almost one hundred years in the life of any town. Contemporary Columbus with its modern buildings, its offices and hospitals, theatres, homes and hotels is more than a community of people. It it a community of ideas. Some of these ideas are complex and to digest them requires the perspective of history and the understanding that only the very wise and the very old can truly achieve. The daily papers which are read by Platte County residents today only confirm the fact that no man liveth unto himself alone --- that our interests are all bound up together in a giant total. It is, perhaps, through the small stories, the trivial doings of men, that we trace their progress and their growth. An advertisement in the Columbus Telegram that farmers enroll their spring pigs in a million dollar hog race sponsored by the manufacturer of a well known feed. This is the advertising present linked to the past, the ancient and honorable competition of humans in the race for achievement. It might have appeared in a paper published in 1856, or it might appear in the year 2000. It is a timeless touchstone in a territory where crops and livestock are all-important to life.

Another story advertises a drive-in restaurant. Its wording is terse, colloquial and behind its commercial message we detect the eagerness with which twentieth century merchants strive to outdistance their competitors. The marriage of the automobile with the market place has, at last, come to this. It is the honest bawling of wares that men have heard throughout centuries, set in bold face type and bought by the column-inch.

The third story arouses no amazement in this day. A woman, a local matron, has won in an election of candidates for the school board. She is accepted by the community in her new office just as she would have been accepted a century ago in her role of mother and wife. The town notes the change and history moves on, but Columbus is a better city for this broadening stride, a more democratic one --- the modern example of a community in which each man and woman plays an integrated part.

BUSINESS SURVEY IN 1948

No picture of Platte County today would be complete without a thorough annotating of the business and commercial establishments which compose the complex economic life of the territory. Many of these are the outgrowths of a near-one hundred years of progress. (The following list was compiled from the January 1, 1948, Business Directory. New changes are being made constantly.)

Transportation -- which has been the modern equivalent of an ancient symbolic fetish to Columbus, bringing fertility and abundance, roaring past with its great trappings. of iron and steel, breathing fire and arousing all to the wonder of its speed transportation has brought the following services and establishments into the community:

SALES AND SERVICE: Airport -- Great Plains Airways; Ambulances, Gass Ambulance Service; Automobile Agencies, Charlie Ball Motor Company, Buick Service, The Nielsen Chevrolet Company, Ewert Motor and Implement Company, Ford Sales and Service, the Kaiser-Frazer Sales and Service, Wilcynski-Tredway Motor Company, Pfeifer Brothers Plymouth Garage,

© 2005 for the NEGenWeb Project by Ted & Carole Miller