About ten miles north of the present site of Sidney, he came upon a detachment that had already been sent out. They said that the day before, they had had an engagement with some Indians near there, and had taken from them a number of horses, which proved to be Goad's, and the Indians had fled in the storm towards the south. A few days later thirty-six men arrived at a "ranch" on the Lodgepole, about twenty-five miles west of Julesburg, and thirty of them were pretty badly frozen.

Nearly all the cattle drifted into the fort in the next week or so, and the fact of their weathering this severe storm, and seemed little the worse for it, brought to the mind of Mr. Coad the idea that the prairie grasses must be very nutritious and sustaining, even though browned by the autumn suns and beaten by the wintry winds; and from that thought in his mind and the minds of Creighton, and of others, were born the big ranches of the Panhandle, and followed the years "when cattlemen were kings."

The "ranch" on the Lodgepole where these storm-beaten fugitives found shelter, was one of the early structures used for housing and protection along the line of the Union Pacific, then being projected up the Platte and Lodgepole.

In November, 1866, the construction of the railroad was completed as far west as North Platte, and on the 31st day of January, 1867, the plat of the original town was filed. A military post was established, and soldiers were garrisoned there. "Shorter" county, the antecedent of Lincoln county, had tried to organize five or six years earlier, but the only officer who had qualified was Charles McDonald, judge, who did so in order to perform marriage ceremonies. The county seat had been designated as Cottonwood Springs, but the county was re-organized as Lincoln County, and the county seat moved to North Platte, by a total of twenty-one votes cast, on October 8, 1867.