The stories of the Indian wars of the early trappers in this vicinity, and as well as much of the ccw man's story appears in other parts of these volumes, and need not be repeated here. The Indian agencies known as Red Cloud on White river, and Spotted Tail on the pine ridges northeast of Chadron were the original cause for building Fort Robinson, but the discovery of gold in the Black Hills made it of vastly greater significance than at first intended. The two roads from the

Union Pacific railroad, from Sidney and Cheyenne, here joined in one, going north to Custer and Deadwood.

Sioux county climate is not materially different from that of other parts of the Panhandle of Nebraska. It is perhaps a little more subject to severe storms, the most extraordinary of which was probably the snowstorm of April seventeenth, nineteen twenty. This storm literally buried the Northwestern passenger train near Harrison, and smothered some of the dwellings nearly to the eaves. However the isothermal lines do not seem to give it the low degree of temperature that is occasionally evident two hundred miles farther to the east. Rainfall of recent years has been sufficient to raise ordinary farm crops of this altitude and latitude, but yields are better if supplimented with irrigation. Dry land farming is not a safe proposition under the usual amount of rainfall, but the excessive precipitation of the last few years may prove of a permanent nature.

In all the high prairie country, winds of considerable velocity are not uncommon. Before the groves of the later settlers began to dot the prairie these winds were more common and more violent than of later years. Meteoric conditions no doubt have an important part in the change.