Charlie was quite a fellow to "play his own hand," so he soon went over on the Box Elder in the Goshen Holes and built his initial ranch on the northern range.

The following year he went to the river, for hay and grasses of the Goshen Holes then made rather short picking for the stock in winter. Around the Rock ranch location, then as now, there were some excellent meadows. The summer range around there was good, and the valley produced good hay for winter. This brought about the building of the ranch at that point about 1877.

The earlier years had witnessed activity in the same vicinity. Carleton Clinton tells us that the original name was Stone ranch, from the fact that a southerner first located it, that his name was Stone, and that he brought north with him a number of slaves, and lived there for a time. Clinton has not given us his authority, and we have been unable to convince ourselves that slavery has ever existed in the North Platte valley. None of the chroniclers of events along the Overland trail has mentioned it, and the trail fell into disuse about the time or shortly after slavery was abolished.

The overland stage and the pony express had a stopping place near the present ranch, and the meadows were used for supplying feed for their stock. But I am conviced that Rock ranch as a ranch- came into existence, almost simultaneously with the abandonment of the old Red Cloud agency. Stealing stock, particularly horses, by the Indians was common at that time.