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By ALBERT WATKINS Cheyenne county was organized by
authority of an act of the second state legislature approved
June 12, 1867. This legislature was called in the third
special session for the main purpose of passing laws for
carrying on the new state government. The county comprised
all the territory lying between the one hundred and second
and the one hundred and fourth degrees of longitude and the
forty-first and forty-second degrees of latitude. It was
about one hundred and four miles in length and seventy in
breadth, and its area exceeded that of twelve counties of
the usual size. 1"Messages & Proclamations", in the governor's office. |
Dygart, clerk; John G. Ellis, sheriff; D. M. Kelleher, probate judge; H. L. Ellsworth, Frederick Glover and C. A. Moore, commissioners; Alexander Miller, surveyor. Golden did not qualify for the office of county treasurer, and Thomas Kane was appointed to fill the vacancy. No county superintendent of schools was elected until 1871, presumably because the population was so sparse that the organization of schools was impracticable. On that far frontier individuals were so self-sufficient in administering justice that a coroner was needed even less than a superintendent of schools; so it appears that none was elected until 1873. However, by a provision of the statute, the sheriff might act as coroner in case of need. By a general statute unorganized counties were attached to the next county directly east for judicial and revenue purposes. The northwest corner of the original Lincoln county was contiguous to the southeastern boundary of Cheyenne county. Buffalo county did not join Cheyenne, but was the next county from it directly east. By the act of February 15, 18692 the "county of Cheyenne" was attached to Lincoln county for judicial and revenue purposes. There was no election until 1870. By the act of June 6, 1871, Cheyenne was constituted "a separate county for judicial, election, and revenue purposes." The first general election in which Cheyenne county participated was that of 1870, October 11. The electors voted the straight ticket for state executive officers, uniformly--eighteen for the democratic candidates and sixteen for the republican. David Butler was the republican candidate for governor, and John H. Croxton, of Nebraska City, the democratic candidate. John Taffe, of Omaha, republican candidate for member of congress, received fifteen votes, and George B. Lake, of Omaha, fusion can- 2Laws of Nebraska 1869, p. 249. |
didate of the democratic party, and the "people's reform party of the state of Nebraska," nineteen. According to the United States census of 1870 there were only fifty-two white inhabitants in the "unorganized northwest territory"--all that part of the state west of longitude one hundred and one degrees and thirty minutes--and Cheyenne county is not listed at all; but the United States census returns of 1880 give the population of the county in 1870 as one hundred and ninety, without explaining how or when it was ascertained. The state began to make annual enumerations in 1874, and that year the population of Cheyenne county was four hundred and forty-nine; it was four hundred and fifty-seven in 1875, four hundred and seventy-six (estimated) in 18763, eight hundred and ninety-nine in 18784; by the United States census, 1,558 in 1880; by the state census 1,653 in 1885; by the United States census 5,693 in 1890; 5,570 in 1900; 4,551 in 1910. On the sixth of November, 1888, a majority of the voters of Cheyenne county authorized the creation of the counties of Banner, Deuel, Kimball, and Scott's Bluff out of its own territory; and they were organized accordingly. By the United States census of 1890, Banner county contained a population of 2,435; Deuel, 2,893; Kimball, nine hundred fifty-nine; Scott's Bluff, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight; total, 8,175. This sum added to the population of the reduced Cheyenne county in 1890--5,693--gives 13,868 as the population contained in the territory of the original Cheyenne county in 1890. Again, by authority of an election held November 3, 1908, Morrill county was formed out of Cheyenne, and by the census of 1910 the population of the new county was 4,584. This sum added to 4,551, the population of the reduced Cheyenne county for 3Senate Journal 1877, p. 879. 4Nebraska Legislative Manual 1877, p. 48. |
1910, yields 9,135 as the population contained in the territory of Cheyenne county as it was before Morrill county was taken from it. In 1880 the population of Sidney precinct was 1,173, and that of the town of Sidney, 1,069. In 1890 the population of Sidney precinct was 1,365. That of the town of Sidney was not enumerated singly. In 1900 the population of Sidney was 1,001; in 1910, 1,185. In 1880 the population of the several precincts was as follows: Sidney, one thousand one hundred and seventy-three; Lodge Pole, ninety-seven; Antelope, thirty-eight; Big Spring, ninety-nine; Court House Rock, eighty-five; Potter, sixty-six; total 1,558. Greenwood, a village in Lodge Pole precinct, had fifty inhabitants, and Camp Clarke, in Court House Rock precinct, forty-eight. Prior to 1876 the white population of the county was confined to ranchers along the Oregon and California road who catered to the travelers, and employees at the stations of the overland stage company. Additions were caused also by the advent of the Union Pacific railroad. Sidney was started as a station of the road which reached its site in August, 1867. In 1876 Sidney became an important junction and outfitting point of the large emigration to the Black Hills caused by important discoveries of gold. The effect of this movement is indicated by the large increase in the population of the county in 1878 over that of 1876.5 The 5 Following is the progressive population of the territory of the original Cheyenne county:
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census of 1876 was taken, evidently, before the tide of travel had set in. Camp Clarke also became an important center of population and business through the same influence. Cheyenne county was appropriately named for the Cheyenne Indians, a tribe of the great Algonkian family. They lived on the lower Cheyenne river in the eighteenth century, but in the early part of the nineteenth century were driven into the Black Hills by the more powerful and relentless Sioux. About 1845 they had become wanderers between the north fork of the Platte river and the Arkansas, and in this way they became separated into two bands called Northern Cheyenne and Southern Cheyenne. The Southern Cheyenne united with the Arapaho, their kinsmen. In these migrations they roamed and hunted over the territory afterward formed into Cheyenne county, and the vicinity of Julesburg was a favorite rendezvous. In 1865 the Cheyenne at the Upper Platte agency numbered seven hundred and twenty; those of the Upper Arkansas agency, 1,600. The Arapaho of the South separated from the Cheyenne in 1872. At the same time the Arapaho at these agencies numbered respectively 1,800 and 1,500. In May, 1877, nine hundred and thirty-seven Cheyenne were taken from Red Cloud agency to Indian Territory. In September of the same year about three hundred, under Dull Knife, came north to join the Sioux. They carried captives captured in the Custer fight the year before. Their total number has since became somewhat, but not greatly, reduced. The Cheyenne were fierce fighters. The men were noted for their fine physique and the women for their good looks. Early in the decade of 1860-1870 the Cheyenne and the Sioux began to resent the intrusion of the great number of white travelers and settlers into their territory, and in the summer of 1864 they began a concerted attack on the line of the California road, from the Little Blue valley four |
hundred miles westward. The war continued with occasional cessation for about fifteen years. The construction of the Pacific. railroad increased the hostility of the Indians, and their attacks were furious in 1867 while the Union Pacific railroad was passing through their country. The Cheyenne and Sioux coöperated in this long war. The most important military contest within the territory which afterward comprised Cheyenne county is called the battle of Ash Hollow. This battle occurred on the third of September, 1855, at a point on Blue Water creek, about seven miles northwest of the mouth of Ash Hollow, between nine companies of United States troops commanded by General W. S. Harney and about seven hundred Brulé, Ogalala, and Minneconjou Sioux and Northern Cheyenne. The Indians were decisively defeated with a loss of eighty-six killed and about seventy women and children captured. On the night before the battle General Harney's force camped at the mouth of Ash Hollow. In the early part of the decade of 1850-60 one Jules Benoit, or Bené, established a ranch on the south side of the Platte river about a mile east of the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek.6 This place became an important station on the California road. Early in September, 1864, company F of the Seventh Iowa cavalry began the erection of sod buildings for a military post at a point about one mile west of Jules Station and opposite the mouth of the Lodge Pole.7 The order to establish the post was issued May 19, 1864, and its official name was Camp Rankin until it was changed to Fort Sedgwick by an order of September 27, 1865, in honor of Major General John Sedgwick who was killed in the battle of Spottsylvania Court House, Virginia, in 1864. On the seventh of January, 1865, the company named attacked over a thousand Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, 6 The Indian War of 1864 (Ware), p. 427. 7 Ibid., p. 326; Report of Secretary of War, 2d Sess., 40th Cong., p. 436. |
near the post, and were repulsed with a loss of fourteen killed. Fifty-six Indians were killed. On the sixth and seventh of February, 1865, a large force of Indians besieged two hundred men of the Eleventh Ohio cavalry, at Mud Springs, but the white soldiers held their post. On the second of February, 1865, about 1,500 Cheyenne and Arapaho burned all the buildings at Julesburg and attacked the fort, but did not succeed in capturing it before they discovered the near approach of Colonel Robert R. Livingston with a detachment of four hundred men of the Seventh Iowa cavalry and the First Nebraska veteran volunteer cavalry, when they abandoned the siege. The famous Oregon Trail traversed the territory afterward formed into Cheyenne county, entering it from the east on the south side of the south fork which it crossed at various places not far beyond, reaching the north fork at Ash Hollow and following its bank until it crossed to reach the Sweetwater. The Mormon road, and later the California road, starting from Omaha, ran along the north side of the Platte until they crossed near Fort Laramie, crossing again at the bend of the river about one hundred and twenty-five miles farther on. The earliest travelers to and beyond the Rocky mountains followed the Missouri to its upper reaches. In 1824 W. H. Ashley, a noted fur trader, led a party of three hundred men over the cut-off route afterwards called the Oregon Trail into the Green river fur fields. In 1830, William Sublette, a former associate of Ashley's, took the first wagons--ten in number--to the mountains by this route. In 1832 Nathaniel J. Wyeth, of Boston, and William Sublette went over the route with a party of about eighty men and three hundred horses. In the same year the famous Captain Bonneville took a train of twenty wagons. These were the first wagons to cross the Rocky mountains. The first organized band of Oregon emigrants, about a hundred and |
twenty in number, went in 1842, and another company of about one thousand in 1843; and John C. Fremont, the famous explorer, followed closely after them. The road became known as the Oregon Trail about this time. About fifteen hundred Mormons went through on the north side of the river in 1847. The first band, numbering one hundred and forty-nine, passed the mouth of Ash Hollow on the opposite side of the river, on the 20th of May. In 1857, an army of 2,500, under command of Albert Sidney Johnston, afterward the famous confederate general, who was killed at the battle of Shiloh, marched over the road to quell the Mormon insurrection at Salt Lake City. About three thousand more soldiers were started from Fort Leavenworth in the spring of 1858, but the greater part of them were recalled at various points along the road. The remainder re-enforced Johnston's army at Salt Lake. In all 4,956 wagons and carriages and 53,430 draught animals were required for this expedition. Not far from Fort Kearny, a band of Cheyenne successfully ran off eight hundred beef cattle which were being driven out in 1857, to supply the Salt Lake army. Lieutenant General Sherman, commander of the division of the Missouri, traveled over the trail, as fax as Fort Laramie, in August, 1866, to make a personal military inspection of that warlike part of his command. He traveled by railroad from St. Louis to St. Joseph, thence by steamboat to Omaha, thence by the Union Pacific road as far as it was finished--to a point five miles east of Fort Kearny--thence by ambulance drawn by mules to Fort Laramie. On account of the continuing Indian hostilities, he went as far as Fort Sedgwick in 1867, and remained there from June 6 to June 22. Military posts were established all along the great highway to Oregon and California for the protection of travelers--Fort Kearny, the first, in 1848. In August and 16 |
September, 1864, Captain Shuman, of the Eleventh Ohio cavalry, built Camp Shuman at a point three miles west of the Scott's Bluff gap. The post was afterward named Fort Mitchell, for General Robert B. Mitchell then commander of the district. At the same time minor fortifications were built at Ficklin's, and Mud Springs.. Ficklin's was nine miles east of Scott's Bluff, and Mud Springs, at the north end of "Jules' Stretch," was eight miles easterly from Courthouse Rock. This new route or cut-off was named for Jules, the ranchman. It crossed the south fork of the Platte river at his establishment, continued up the south bank of the Lodge Pole thirty-five miles, then across the stream and the high plateau thirty-two miles to Mud Springs in the valley of the North Platte. Passing about two miles southwest of Courthouse Rock, it intersected the old Ash Hollow road about midway between Courthouse Rock and Chimney Rock. Fort Grattan was built of sod at the mouth of Ash Hollow by General Harney's command, immediately after the battle of that name. It was abandoned on the first of the following October when the force left to occupy Fort Pierre on the Missouri river. Fort Grattan was named for Lieutenant John L. Grattan, who with a detachment of twenty-nine men was killed on the nineteenth of August, 1854, by a band of over a thousand Sioux warriors, about six miles below Fort Laramie. General Harney pursued these Indians and punished them at Ash Hollow. Fort Sidney was established December 13, 1867, as a subpost of Fort Sedgwick and was known as Sidney Barracks. It became an independent post November 28, 1870, and was abandoned June 1, 1874. Its reservation of six hundred and twenty acres was relinquished to the department of the interior November 14, 1894, except twenty acres of the northeast corner which was donated to Sidney for cemetery purposes, by act of congress, June 10, 1892. |
In 1875 part of the building material of dismantled Fort Kearny was used in improvements of Fort Sidney. Cheyenne county contained the famous Wild Cat range of mountains which became celebrated by reports of the early travelers. Among the most noted peaks, near the great road, are Courthouse Rock and Chimney Rock, now in Morrill county, and Scott's Bluff, now in Scott's Bluff county. The two highest peaks in Nebraska are Hogback 5,082 feet, and Wild Cat, 5,038 feet--both in Banner county. The plain of the northwest part of Kimball county attains the highest elevation of the state, 5,300 feet. |
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