The first purpose of the soldiers at Fort Sidney was to protect the builders of the railroad; four troops of the Third and Fifth United States Cavalry were stationed there and a portion of the Third Infantry for a time but they were later sent to another post. General Dudley was in command of Sidney Post and remained two years before being relieved by Genera] Merritt. A companv of soldiers was stationed at or near the present site of the town of Lodgepole and another twenty miles west, where Potter is now located. In the middle eighties troops from Vancouver and other Pacific coast garrisons were sent

tO these posts for a time.

Politics, even at this early day, entered into

he lifi mi Cheyenne county, as George W. E.

member of Congress from the Third

Nebraska District, which extended a;

a- Fremont, his Ik. me. used the threat or

scare regularly to have Fort Sidney abandoned, as an excuse to be returned to Congress. He succeeded in being elected until the farmers' revolution resulted in the election of Omer M. Kem. Four years after he was first elected, or in 1894, the post was abandoned and the government property later sold to the Burlington railroad and used as the site for the present station grounds.

The Union Pacific railroad was built on to the west from Sidney in 1868, and with it went a large part of the population of the town when it was the end of the road. There was a large, nomadic, rough element in the country at the time, which always followed the rail head where it could prey on the laborers. The post was reduced to the mere needs of protection from Indians, which grew less and less each year.