EARLY DAYS IN POLK COUNTY
By Calmar McCune
In the early history of the county, county warrants were thicker than the leaves on the trees (for trees were scarce then), and of money in the pockets of most people there was none. Those were the days when that genial plutocrat, William H. Waters, relieved the necessities of the needy by buying up county warrants for seventy-five cents on the dollar. Don't understand this as a reflection on the benevolent intentions of Mr. Waters, for he paid as high a price as anybody else offered; I mention it only to illustrate the financial condition of the people and the body politic.
Henry Mahan was postmaster and general merchant. The combined postoffice and store which, with a blacksmith shop, constituted the business part of the town of Osceola, was located on the west side of the square. It was a one and one-half story frame and on the second floor was The Homesteader (now the Osceola Record). Here H. T. Arnold, W. F. Kimmel, Frank Burgess, the writer, and Stephen Fleharty exercised their gray matter by grinding out of their exuberant and sometimes lurid imaginations original local items and weighty editorials. In those days if a top buggy was seen out on the open, treeless prairie, the entire business population turned out to watch it and soon there were bets as to whether it came from Columbus or Seward, for then there was not a top buggy in Polk county. The first drug store was opened by John Beltzer, a country blacksmith who suddenly blossomed from the anvil into a full-fledged pharmacist. Doctor Stone compounded the important prescriptions for a while.
I need not try to describe the grasshopper raid of 1874 for the old-timers remember it and I could not picture the tragedy so that others could see it. To see the sun's rays dimmed by the flying agents of destruction; to witness the disappearance of every vestige of green vegetation—the result of a year's labor, which was to most of the inhabitants the only resource against actual want, to see this I say, one must live through it. Many of the early settlers were young people newly married, who had left their homes in the East with all their earthly possessions in a covered wagon, or "prairie schooner" as it was called, and making the trip overland, had landed with barely enough money to exist until the first crop was harvested. Added to the loss and privation entailed by the visitation of the winged host was the constant dread that the next season would bring a like scourge.
On Sunday afternoon, April 13, 1873, I left the farm home of James Bell in Valley precinct for Columbus, expecting to take the train there Monday morning for Omaha. The season was well advanced, the treeless prairie being covered with verdure. It was a balmy sunshiny spring day, as nearly ideal as even Nebraska can produce.
As I left the Clother hotel that evening to attend the Congregational church I noticed that the clouds were banking heavily in the northwest. There was a roll of distant thunder, a flash of lightning, and a series of gentle spring showers followed and it was raining when I went to bed at my hotel. Next morning when I looked out of my window I could not see half-way across the street. The wind was blowing a gale, which drove large masses of large, heavy snow-flakes southward. Already where obstructions were met the huge drifts were forming. This continued without cessation of either snow or wind all day Monday and until late Tuesday night. Wednesday about noon the snow plow came, followed by the Monday train, which I boarded for Omaha. As the train neared Fremont I could see the green knolls peeping up through the snow, and at Omaha the snow had disappeared. There they had had mainly rain instead of snow. I may say that the storm area was not over two hundred miles wide with Clarks as about the center, the volume gradually diminishing each way from that point. It should be borne in mind that the farmers raised mainly spring wheat and oats. These grains had been sown several weeks before the storm and were all up, but the storm did not injure them in the least.
On leaving Omaha a few days later I went to Grand Island. At Gardner's Siding, between Columbus and Clarks, a creek passed under the track. This had filled bank high with snow which now melting, formed a lake. The track being bad the train ran so slowly that I had time to count fifty floating carcasses of cattle upon the surface of the water. This was the fate of many thousands of head of stock.
Nobody dared to venture out into that storm for no human being could face it and live. The great flakes driven by a fifty-mile gale would soon plaster shut eyes, nose and mouth—in fact, so swift was the gale that no headway could be made against it.
In those days merchants hauled their goods from Columbus or Seward and all the grain marketed went to the same points. Wheat only was hauled, corn being used for feed or fuel.
A trip to Columbus and return the same day meant something. A start while the stars still twinkled; the mercury ten, twenty, or even thirty degrees below, was not a pleasure trip, to the driver on a load of wheat. But the driver was soon compelled to drop from the seat, and trudge along slapping his hands and arms against his body to keep from freezing. Leaving home at three or four o'clock in the morning he was lucky if he got home again, half frozen and very weary, several hours after dark. Speaking of exposure to wintry blasts, reminds me of a trip on foot I made shortly after my arrival in Polk county. December 24, 1872, I started to walk from the Milsap neighborhood in Hamilton county, several miles west of where Polk now stands, to the home of William Stevens, near the schoolhouse of District No. 5. It was a clear, bitter cold morning, the wind blowing strongly from the northwest, the ground coated with a hard crust of snow. I kept my bearings as best I could, for it should be remembered that there were no roads or landmarks and I was traveling purely by guess. Along about mid-day I stumbled upon a little dugout, somewhere north of where Stromsburg now stands—the first house I had seen. On entering I found a young couple who smiled me a welcome, which was the best they could do, for, as I saw from the inscriptions on a couple of boxes, they were recent arrivals from Sweden. The young lady gave me some coffee and rusks, and I am bound to say that I never tasted better food than that coffee and those rusks. I did not see another house until I reached the bluffs, where, about sunset, I was gladdened by the sight of the Stevens house in the valley, a couple of miles distant. When I finally reached this hospitable home the fingers of both hands were frozen and my nose and ears badly frosted.
In the early days we traveled from point to point by the nearest and most direct route, for while the land was being rapidly taken up, there were no section line roads. Whenever the contour of the land permitted, we angled, being careful to avoid the patches of cultivated land. There were no trees, no fences, and very few buildings, so, on the level prairie, nothing obstructed the view as far as the eye could carry. The sod houses and stables were a godsend, for lumber was very expensive and most of the settlers brought with them lean purses. It required no high-priced, skilled labor to build a "soddy," and properly built they were quite comfortable.
When I grow reminiscent and allow my mind to go back to those pioneer days, the span of time between then and now seems very brief, but when I think longer and compare the then with the now, it seems as though that sod house-treeless-ox driving period must have been at least one hundred years ago. It is a far cry from the ox team to the automobile.