The story of the first mill and the efforts to locate the same in this valley is told that the spirit of the people of the valley be shown. In the years of its initiation the Great Western sent several men into the valley to look it over and report. By accident I met W. H.

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

Fairbrother and made one or two trips with him. One time I took him to look over the Hiersche farm of two hundred acres east of town and tried to point out its attractive features as a suitable location for a sugar factory.

As the matter seemed near to culmination A. V. Officer came into the valley. We had a sort of a commercial club that occasionally met in the hall of the old frame that stood where the First National Bank now stands and for the time had Charles A. Morrill for its presiding officer. Morrill, J. C. McCreary, F. F. Everett and Fred A. Wright with "Doc" A. T. Crawford drove overland to Denver, encountering considerable snow south of Cheyenne, and met some of the officers of the sugar company and they left but little unsaid that needed to be said in favor of the point.

Enthusiasm ran high and so high that a telegram signed by C. A. Morrill as president of the commercial club went to the Lincoln

Sugar Factory, Scottsbluff

Land Company and several others that might be interested. Charlie did not happen to be at home at the time but he did happen to be in how he telegraphed from Scottsbluff when he was already in Lincoln.