Currens said, "I had been down at Bridgeport and built a church and now I came to Scottsbluff. But there were no Presbyterians in sight. How could we have a church here? Rev. E. H. Sayre and his family were at Gering, but they had Methodist and Baptist churches there. Also resident pastors and it was the desire of the Presbyterians not to the town the night before. Some of the men were shaving each other, and others were doing their week's washing. The construction
tramp on other people's toes, or divide the community, or the support of the struggling churches there.
"I had been Sunday School missionary for several years and sometime every summer I would come down from Alliance, organizing Sunday Schools in nearly every sod or log school house that I could find, as far west as Sunflower. One was in the dining room of the old Camp Clarke hotel several years before the railroad came. Another was in the old Wright school house two or three miles east of the proposed town of Scottsbluff.
"How to build a church at Scottsbuff ? -- that was the question. Where were the Presbyterians to support it ? -- that was another question. I decided to try. I put a tent in a corn field and went out to Jacobus' sod house. This was on the east ward school house site. It was later bought by the chautauqua association, and by the people connected therewith sold to the school district. Jacobus' family occupied the sod house that stood among the young cottonwoods of the time. I visited W. H. Wr right who then lived two miles in the country ; then Mr. Lackey, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Sayre; and others that I knew personally. Mr. Wright, who was townsite agent, and I selected a lot and I put up the tent, intending to hold a week's meeting.