290 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



becoming to an inhabitant of the hills. He was allowed to dangle at the 

 end of the lariat from the telephone pole too long, and as a consequence 

 the four young men are in prison for the rest of their days. 



From these statements the reader must not infer that life in the 

 Sand Hills is dangerous or even uncongenial because of man's relation to 

 his fellows. Naturally these people have individual rights which they 

 will protect with their lives, but to one who "lives in the open," no truer 

 or more loyal friend can be found than in these men of the hills. Fru- 

 gal, but hospitable to the extreme, they take great pleasure in the enter- 

 tainment, in their humble way, of strangers who may chance among 

 them. There are some localities settled by a very well educated and cul- 

 tured people. It seems to me that the state should aid these people more 

 than it has in solving the problems of the range. We spend thousands of 

 dollars to aid the farmer to get more returns from the farm, but very 

 little has been spent in the effort to improve the range in this quarter of 

 the state and to make the ranchman's life more pleasant and productive. 



Many of the homesteaders in this region after struggling along for 

 a number of years, often facing death through cold or starvation, were 

 compelled to relinquish their claims and leave the hills. So today one 

 may find in many places the old dilapidated "soddy" and the scrubby, 

 straggling timber claims of those who gave up the fight. On the other 

 hand many of those who managed to stay in the region have prospered. 

 The sod shanty was for many years the characteristic habitation of the 

 homesteader's family. This home was added to from time to time 

 until a rather low, three or four-roomed house of sod with plastered 

 walls afforded much more comfort than the old conditions. At first 

 the roof was also made of sod, but in later years the board or tar-paper 

 roof has been substituted for the leaky sod. Those who have gone into 

 the hills in the past few years and have taken 'claims under the Kincaid 

 act have commonly built shacks of rough boards. Many of the older 

 residents of the Sand Hills have lived for a number of years in very 

 comfortable frame houses with most of the conveniences of the com- 

 mon farm house. Even the cement block has invaded the hills and now 

 there are numerous ranches with cement block homes and round about the 

 many other well-constructed buildings of the up-to-date ranch. Thus the 

 development of the civilization and the architecture of the Sand Hills 

 has passed through a number of periods in many ways as interesting 

 and as remarkable as the evolution of the landscape and the vegeta- 

 tion of this great pasture domain. 



