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Early N.W. Kansas Reminisces
By Mr. and Mrs. Henry H. Anthony
We lived on the creek and the cattle
trail came within a quarter of a mile of our house, crossing our place. Thousands of Texas cattle would be driven through in one herd from Texas to the Sand Kills
and into the Dakotas. Also herds of horses and thousands of buffalo would come thundering down the slope a mile long to the creek to water. Many is the time I have
climbed the nearest tree to get to safety and sat for hours waiting for them to move on. Usually when they had drunk their fill they would go out on the flat and
lie down for hours. So never wanted for buffalo meat and could have gathered plenty of Buffalo bricketts if we chose, but had plenty of timber on our land. And many
times we have had to herd the buffalo off our crops. Once when my mother was urging the dog to drive them from a field they started after the dog and he made for
mother, she scolded the dog away and he made for the timber, and the buffalo surrounded her and passing on after the dog they never harmed her. God and His Guardian
Angel were her only protection and He protected us through many other such dangers.
In the later part of September,
1875 we had a terrible grasshopper raid. About mid-afternoon we heard a terrible roar as of a hail storm and a black cloud covered the sun causing’ the chickens to
go to roost because of darkness. Cows and horses run for the sheds and the ‘hoppers settled and covered everything, taking every vestige of vegetation of any kind.
They ate the leaves off trees and left the ground bare as a floor when they flow on. The poison they deposited on leaves that fell into the creek killed all the
fish. They had deposited millions of eggs and in the spring they began to hatch out. It looked as though we would lose all again but on the 30th of April came a
snow, sleet and rain and by the time it had stopped it killed all of the grass hoppers and the dugouts with dirt roofs were leaking until it was drier outside than
in. We wore truly thankful ours was covered with boards. And again that year there was a good crop that gave us all hopes for the future. That fall seen our first
threshing machine, heretofore the men used a flail or tramped the grain out with horses.
Our first school was held in my mother’s living room as we had a kitchen. The living room was rocked up
from the floor so that it would never cave in. We
also had a wood floor and roof. Ed Stilleon was our first teacher. He was holding down a nearby claim and slept
and ate his breakfast there. Mother gave him dinner and supper. He later became a County Superintendent.
Our Sunday School was also held in. our living room, using only Bibles, as Sunday School quarterlies wore beyond our reach.
In the spring of 1875 a mail route was established from Red Willow, Neb. to Buffalo, Kansas via Oberlin. John Rodehaaver
was Oberlin’s first postmaster.
The Texas cattle trail was Moved from, the east line of Norton County to the west side of the Anthony place and northwest to Ogallala to establish great cattle
ranches of northwest Nebraska and eastern Colorado. It was interesting to see herds of five thousand and many more times that go over the trail.
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