If a bid of seven dollars was received and no higher bid made, it would be sold to the bidder on payment of one-tenth of the purchase price down, and the balance in twenty-one years at six percent interest. If not sold, it would be offered for lease at its appraised value, the lessee to pay six percent per annum on that appraisement which ranged from one dollar and a quarter to four dollars per acre. This auction was held in front of the Bank

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

of Nonpareil, the court house not yet having been completed. Deputy- Land Commissioner, J. S. Scott, was in charge of this sale, but little of the land offered found buyers until section thirty-six, township twenty-five, range fortyeight, the present site of Alliance, was reached in its order. This brought on spirited bidding.

J. B. Weston, representing the Lincoln Land Company, bid seven dollars per acre on the first forty acre tract offered for sale. This bid was immediately raised by J. H. Sigafoos, and the land was bid up and finally sold to J. B. Weston for forty-three dollars per acre. Bidding on other forty acre tracts was just as spirited, being sold to the same purchaser for prices ranging from thirty-three to forty dollars per acre. Finally the last forty acre tract, it being where South Alliance is now located, was dropped to Mr. Sigafoos at a price of thirty-eight dollars per acre.

The high price which this land brought was convincing proof to the people of western Nebraska that upon the arrival of the Burlington railroad then building westward, this would be made an important division point with shops and other things calculated to make a large and thriving city, all of which expectations have been realized.