Geological Survey Bulletin 612 Guidebook of the Western United States: Part B

SHEET No. 4. (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

Kearney (see sheet 4, p. 28) takes its name from old Fort Kearney, which stood south of the river, a few miles east of the city, at the junction of the emigrant trail from Kansas City and the Platte Valley trail. It was a center of turbulence during the time of Indian warfare. Here during the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad, according to Gen. Dodge, there were more desperate fights and literally hair-raising adventures than James Fenimore Cooper ever dreamed of, and here Maj. Frank J. North, with his four companies of Pawnee Indians, made history defending the Overland Route against hostile Indians. The Plum Creek, Ogalalla, and Summit Springs campaigns under Maj. North's direction did much to prove conclusively to the Sioux and Cheyenne that he was their absolute master. The same writer says that every mile of the railroad had to be surveyed and built within range of the rifle and under military protection, and much of the success of the enterprise he attributes to the active support of Gen. Grant and Gen. Sherman.

The bottom land, which farther east is about 22 miles wide, here narrows to a width of 6 miles. The river bed is very wide and shallow and the wagon bridge over it south of Kearney is nearly a mile long. Except at times of high water broad stretches of sand in this bed are exposed to the strong northwest winds, which pile it up south of the river, destroying much productive land. The sand-dune areas are characterized by irregular, hummocky surfaces, some of the higher mounds rising 100 feet or more above the general surface. The largest bodies of sand extend for 50 miles along the south side of the Platte Valley south and west of Kearney. The width of the wider parts of this sand-dune belt is about 3 miles.

The Overland Route here reaches its southernmost point and turns again toward the north. On leaving Kearney the traveler may see the buildings of the State Normal School on the lowland north of the road and an industrial school on the highlands.

West of Kearney the bluffs, consisting of loess overlying rocks of late Tertiary age,¹ are about a mile from the railroad.

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¹A large part of the central Great Plains is covered, according to N. H. Darton, by deposits of Miocene and Pliocene age, underlain to the west and northwest by formations of the White River group, of Oligocene age. All these formations lie mainly on the Pierre shale but overlap other formations to a greater or less extent. The average thickness is 200 to 300 feet in eastern Colorado and western Kansas but increases to nearly 1,000 feet in parts of western Nebraska and southeastern Wyoming. Probably the entire region was originally covered by later Tertiary deposits that extended far up the flanks of the Rocky Mountains, the Bighorn Mountains, and the Black Hills, as indicated by the occurrence of outliers at high altitudes.

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Could the traveler restore the landscape of late Tertiary time, he would find himself surrounded by scenes greatly different from those of the present. The swampy lowlands were covered with vegetation similar to that now growing in moist climates farther south. He would recognize few of the animals, for there were camels, mastodons, rhinoceroses, saber-tooth tigers, and other strange beasts, some like those living now only in far-distant lands. (See Pl. VI., p. 40.) There were numerous horses, but none of them were like the horses of to-day. In place of the one hoof or modified toe on each foot which the modern horse possesses, his Pliocene ancestor had three.²

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²The Pliocene of western North America is not well known, but along Snake Creek in western Nebraska there are some deposits referable to this epoch, and from fossils found in them and in rocks of the same age in other parts of the country a considerable number of the animals that lived on the Great Plains during Pliocene time are known. Though these animals form an assemblage very different from that of to-day, they much more closely resemble the living animals than those of former ages. Camels and llamas were abundant (see Pl. VI, p. 40) and great ground sloths and glyptodonts (see Pl. II, C, p. 10), whose relatives now live in South America, inhabited western Nebraska during Pliocene time. Mastodons with tusks on both the upper and the lower jaws, much like those of the Miocene epoch, still persisted. Short-legged rhinoceroses remained abundant, and there was a great variety of wolf-like carnivora. Saber-toothed tigers and true cats, some of them considerably larger than the modern tigers, were also abundant. Three-toed horses were still numerous, but the modern genus Equus was not among them. One of the most curious animals of the time in Kansas and Nebraska was a gopher-like rodent that had two large horns on its nose. (See Pl. II, E, p. 10.) Its enormous claws indicate good burrowing powers, and its horns also may have been used in digging.

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After passing the relatively small towns of Odessa, Elm Creek, Overton, and Josselyn, the train reaches the city of Lexington, formerly known as Plum Creek. This was once noted as a favorite locality for depredations by the Southern Cheyenne Indians under Chief Turkey Leg, who captured and burned a freight train here in 1867. It is now more famous for its irrigation system. Farther east the farmers depend on the rainfall to water their crops, but from this point westward the river waters are diverted through large ditches and distributed over the cultivated land.

The next station is Darr, beyond which is Cozad, named after a Cincinnati capitalist who purchased a 40,000-acre tract of land and laid out the town on it. The village of Willow Island takes its name from one of the so-called islands included between old channels of the river that are now occupied by water only during floods. It now consists of only a few houses, but has the distinction of being the point from which in 1872 Col. W. F. Cody ("Buffalo Bill") started with Alexis, Grand Duke of Russia, Gen. Custer, Gen. Sheridan, and others for a buffalo hunt over the prairies.

Just before entering Gothenburg the train crosses a large irrigation canal, and farther west such canals are seen in many places. The bottom lands are devoted to the cultivation of crops, and the higher land or general surface of the Great Plains, at considerable distances both north and south of the road, is used largely for grazing. Here, as at almost every other town along the railroad, may be seen elevators, tall buildings used for storing grain.

West of the town is a prominent ridge of sand hills, which the road skirts for many miles. Their barren aspect is in strong contrast with the appearance of the productive bottom lands. This is a part of the great sand-hill district which covers nearly a fourth of Nebraska. The sand is probably derived by disintegration from the Tertiary beds and was heaped into hills by the wind at a time when the surface was not well protected by vegetation. The movement of the sand is checked by the spread of vegetation, especially the bunch grass that grew here generally before the advent of the white man. Where this protecting cover has been destroyed for any reason, such as overstocking, and the sand is exposed, movement begins again and dunes and blow-outs are produced by the winds.

South of the river, about 5 miles from the railroad but plainly visible from the train, are steep slopes and bluffs rising abruptly to a plain that lies 200 feet or more above the bottom lands. There is a notable contrast between the lands along the river and these bluffs, which parallel the railroad for many miles. The slope is notched deeply by canyons with precipitous walls of loess nearly 200 feet thick, which is underlain by sand and gravel containing pebbles of rock brought by the streams in past ages from the Rocky Mountains.