They oversubscribed their quota of every liberty loan, practically doubled the quota for the Red Cross, Y. M. C. A., Knights of Columbus, Salvation Army, and finally in the combination drive for funds. They maintained a local chapter of the American Red Cross and an active and efficient County Council of Defense, a Home Guard of uniformed and armed men, strictly enforced the food regulations, and as a whole rendered valuable services to the country.

Early Settlers

The first white men, other than the French trappers and traders to see Box Butte county, was that great flood of gold seekers who, in 1878 to 1880, traversed its extreme width from south to north over the old Sidney trail from Sidney, Nebraska, to Deadwood, South Dakota, following the discovery of gold there in 1876. These men told the story of the level plains which they crossed between the Platte River on the south, and the Niobrara river on the north. These stories attracted the attention of the owners of the great range herds farther to the eastward.

The next people to visit it were the big cattle owners, their foremen and cowboys. They used the Box Butte plains as a summer range for the cattle which fattened on the nutritious grass with which the plains were thickly covered.

The federal government surveyed the lands in 1879 and 1880, after which they were thrown open to settlement. A few of the earliest settlers came in over the Union Pacific as far as Sidney and then traveled overland following the Sidney trail, and took up homesteads in the southwestern part of the county. On the completion of the Northwestern railroad to Chadron in 1885, the railroad company advertised the rich lands tributary to it throughout the east, and there was a great inrush of settlers, most of whom came over the railroad to Hay Springs, which was the nearest railroad point.