In writing the history of our beautiful city, one begins by casting for facts, like an expert with the rod, casting for bass, and the reel of time sings a pleasing tune as the lure goes out, and almost the first cast is rewarded with trophies of old timers upon the brows of whom age in her annual round-up has placed her brand. Age may conquer the flesh but the spirit of the west never yet surrendered till mortal light was extinguished. Memory sleeps at times, but when awakened flashes with a brightness that illumines the past. So, if the pictures painted here are pleasant, it is because of the incandescent flashes from the by gone years, when the switch key is softly pressed by the hand that here records the story of Chadron's magic growth.

We are deeply indebted to such old timers as Wendel A. Birdsall, P. B. Nelson and Johnnie Stetter, who were in the country when the Spotted Tail Indian agency was over on Beaver creek near "Sheridan Gate," Ben Loewenthal, Jim Owens, Jake Kass and many others who staked their claims at Old Chadron where the Chicago & Northwestern railway crosses White river. Give Johnnie Stetter a good cigar and a half Nelson on your time and he will keep you interested for many hours, telling you how Corporal MacDonald, a regular soldier, skewered Crazy Horse to the wall with a bayonet at the old Red Cloud agency and held him there until he was dead, and how the incident came near causing an outbreak, which only for Antoine Janis, whose wife was Indian, might have resulted in a