293] The Condition of the Western Farmer. 15 



route of early overland emigrants had not lain along the 

 river, owing to the great curves which the course of the Platte 

 follows, but had run some distance to the south in a more 

 nearly straight line, and had only begun to follow the Platte 

 at Fort Kearney, about a hundred and seventy-five miles 

 from the Missouri. In fact this trail seems to have had no 

 influence on the course of settlement at all, for, in illustration, 

 one of the counties through which it passed before reaching 

 Fort Kearney seems to have received absolutely no settlers 

 between the time of the early ranches and the comparatively 

 late date 1866, though this county itself lay immediately 

 south of the Platte. Of the counties along the Platte, by 

 1856 there were settlements in Sarpy, Cass, Douglas, Saun- 

 ders, Dodge, Coif ax, and Platte counties, reaching out over 

 100 miles, and the following year Nance, Merrick, and Hall 

 were invaded. In 1858 Buffalo county, too, had settlers. 

 This brings us to the neighborhood of Fort Kearney, but 

 beyond this point even the advantages of the neighboring 

 river did not attract settlers for a number of years, owing 

 mainly to the idea, of which we have seen illustrations before, 

 that the limit of good agricultural land had been reached and 

 that further west dependence could only be put upon stock- 

 raising. The greatly augmented danger from Indians to 

 the west of Fort Kearney had also its effect in hindering the 

 advance of population. In fact, it was only after the build- 

 ing of the Union Pacific Railroad that any inhabitants but 

 the ranchmen along the overland trail could be found in all 

 that stretch of hundreds of miles between the immediate 

 neighborhood of Fort Kearney and the Rocky Mountains; 

 and not until 1872 was the first farming, even in the western 

 part of Buffalo county, attempted. 



And here a word may be said about the settlements in the 

 western part of the state, and that subject be then permanently 

 dropped; for nothing can be gained from it that will be of 

 interest in our further investigations. With the exception 

 of the comparatively rare river valleys, the western third of 

 the state is sandy, and is in parts composed to a large extent 



