"The wild goose haunts on the willowed isles, And mad, mad rides for a dozen miles.'

These were elements that diverted analytic minds. They fell in love with the prairie and the mountains, and we were entities thereof, which was our good fortune. Signal Buttes stand sentinels above the broad irrigated acres of Colonel Braziel and family, in the west edge of Scotts Bluff county, while the Babylonian facades of Scotts Bluff mountain stand like collosal ruins frowning across the river at the citv in which we dwell.

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

LAING'S RANCH -- THE WATER HOLES -- DEATH OF WHEELER -- FIRST HOGS

ON NORTH RIVER -- FIRST HOGS ON PUMPKIN CREEK --

KILLING RATTLESNAKES

When the grangers began to come into this country, along about 1885, they found a number of ranches, that were not of the really early ones. Sim. Laing had a ranch on "Lorrens ' Fork, where that fine creek pours out of the canyons, and this creek crossing, with its cooling little grove of mountain ash, was a stopping place after the long hard, hot drive, over the tablelands from Sidney.

The Sidney-Black Hills trail struck the valley of the North Platte at Greenwood, coming down from the divide at Tuslers. But a branch trail used by ranchmen and early travellers, left the Black Hills Road sixteen miles northwest of Sidney, at what was known as the "Water Holes." These holes are located about six or seven miles south and the same distance west of the present site of Dalton. This was the branch generally used by early grangers, and there 'was a drive of about twenty miles to "Lorren's" Fork and Laing's ranch. Sim had a brother, Guy, who was in business in North Platte, and who had an interest in the ranch.