“Settling Down” in Western Nebraska: Grounding Local History Through Memoir

Abstract

“S e t t l in g D o w n ” in W e s t e r n N e b r a s k a : G r o u n d in g L o c a l H is t o r y t h r o u g h M e m o ir C h a r l o t t e H o g g All history is ultimately local and personal. To tell what we remember, and to keep on telling it, is to keep the past alive in the present. — Paul Gruchow, Grass Roots T r a v e l a n d S e t t l e m e n t : A Me m o i r o f P l a c e Without the railroad, it’s unlikely my hometown of Paxton, Nebraska (population approximately five hundred), would have existed at all. In Union Pacific: The Building of the First Transcontinental Railroad, Garry Hogg writes that when the Central and Union Pacific Railroads were selecting the trail for building the first transcontinental railroad in the early 1860s, they ultimately followed President Lincoln’s advice “that the most practicable route for their railway was along the Platte Valley” (43). Following the course of the Platte River, the Oregon Trail, the Pony Express, and then the Union Pacific Railroad all enveloped the area that later became my hometown. Paxton is nestled between the North and South Platte Rivers that converge east of town. To the south are the Sandhills, the expanse of dunes— twenty thousand square miles— considered some of the best cattle country in the world. The town itself is one mile from Inter­ state 80, which, like the first transcontinental highway, Lincoln Highway, largely follows the Platte River valley. When I pull off the ramp, I see the town cemetery to the south, then drive the mile into town. Crossing the tracks I see the town depot, the same one used by Edward Searle, who founded the town in 1867.1learned— from a text found in the Paxton library composed by Fae Christensen, who lived her whole life in and around the town— that Searle, a telegraph operator, came during the rush to build the railroad through Nebraska, that the town was first a depot station along the transcontinental railroad route. Within a year the Union Pacific men had “surveyed, graded, and laid” track through the state of Nebraska (Garry Hogg 56). As spikers were laying track on the Union Pacific between Ogallala and Julesburg, Colorado, eighteen-year-old Searle was hired as a telegraph operator 2 2 4 WAL 3 7 . 2 S u m m e r 2 0 0 2 and later promoted to depot agent (Christensen, “How Old Is Paxton?” 1). The depot, though it now sits perpendicular rather than parallel to the tracks is the same building Searle worked in over 125 years ago. From anywhere in town I can hear the trains coming through; when I moved away to college I had trouble sleeping, unable to hear a whistle or feel the slightest tremor in my bed from the Union Pacific trains. iin In 1982, my parents moved from Fargo, North Dakota, to Paxton after a sudden job loss, simply because they weren’t sure where else to go, and my brother and I had to be enrolled in school. My grandma told her son, my dad, “Come home for now.” When we got to town, it was as if everyone was waiting. Mom took us to school, where the principal said, “You’re Jack’s kids? You’ll do well, then.” Down at Hehnke’s Grocery Store, Henry welcomed us, embraced my dad. To me it wasn’t a home­ coming, despite how excited I was to be near my grandma and aunt, who lived two doors away from each other. This wasn’t our first move. In the past few years, I had lived in Minnesota and both of the Dakotas; I was tired of moving. Yet here it was different. Everything around me was both familiar and not. I carried with me the legacy of four generations of Osborns...