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.

In June, eighteen ninety-four, the first incipient cyclone to manifest its presence in the memory or chronicles of man made its appearance near Gilchrist center. In the scattered settlements but little damage was done, D. W. Wroody being about the only sufferer. His sheds were blown down.

About February first, nineteen hundred four, the second and last cyclone known to Sioux county appeared in the Montrose settlement, blowing away Chris Wasserburger's dwelling house.

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

FIRST SETTLERS AND EARLY TOWN HISTORIES

The first white people to visit Sioux county were probably Mallet brothers related in early chapters of this book. Then the trappers' came, and Sage as early as eighteen forty-five made a visit here in connection with the American Fur Company. The next was the establishment of Fort Robinson, and then the Black Hills discovery of gold. In the late seventies the ranchmen came. It is difficult to call a restless mortal like Edgar Beecher Bronson a ranchman because he tarried on Soldier creek for a few weeks or months, or on the Niobrara river a similar length of time. There were many flyby-nights that came and tarried, then went on into oblivion, or distinction as the case may be, that are as entitled to be called ranchmen as is Bronson.