The 1895 ‘Gold fever’ in Southwest Nebraska

First a report on the garden this year. I finally have both asparagus and horseradish growing and I am excited to see if they make it through the winter. The tomatoes didn’t give up, but I did and the last of a bumper crop are going in the freezer because the canner is put away. I wasted money planting beans, but the sugar peas planted in late March were impressive as were the potatoes. The first experiment planting sweet potatoes didn’t yield many but I’m still learning what makes them happy. Thank goodness Klooze Farms had beets because mine resembled radishes from beginning to end. The pocket gophers were happy campers this year and we had a bumper crop of puncture vines. Peppers seem to think hot and dry is their go to weather and my first effort at hot and spicey canned peppers was a success.

In 1895, the town of McCook was 13 years old and gold fever in Cripple Creek was raging. The following stories came from the December 20, 1895, issue of the McCook Tribune.

“C. A. Brewer and William Doyle went up to Cripple Creek, Colorado, Sunday night, to investigate that famous and all-attracting gold camp’s inducement for a meat market, which they propose to establish there if the prospects warrant.”

“It is rumored the L. H. Rooney, who has been in Cripple Creek for the past few weeks, has struck it quite rich in a mine there in which he has an interest. We understand that he thinks the boom has reached the top there, though fortune seekers are still rushing in by the thousands weekly.”

“This gold mining fake business is cropping out all along the Republican River valley. Observe, we state that the “fake business” is coming to the surface, not the much coveted “yellow stuff”. But these little side shows are sadly silly emulations of the great Cripple Creek craze which bids fair to be a world beater.”

These three articles remind me that at one time I had a stock certificate for a gold mine in Indianola. Not quite worth the paper it was printed on but interesting to say the least.

Land transactions also were revealing the less desirable side effects of “prospecting” as was the case with the following article. “Dr. Z.L. Kay arrive home on #3, Sunday night, from a business trip to South Dakota. Among other points he visited in Plankinton, briefly, where he had, or thought he had, some property interests. Upon his arrival there, however, he found that an enterprising firm of abstractors in that town had sold a five-room dwelling on his city property to a party three or four miles out in the country, where the building had been moved three or four months since. All for the munificent sum of about $60. This same enterprising firm of scamps had been pocketing the rental and failed to pay the taxes. But when the doctor’s labors with them were completed, the other fellows wished a thousand times, more or less, that they had quit their meanness before they became the doctor’s agent for that Plankinton property. The doctor’s idea is that South Dakota as a state has at least temporarily gone to the demuition bow-wows, and is for a large part in the undisputed possession of the Russian Thistle, which all over the state seems to abound.” ( I’m going out on a limb here because the meaning of demuition bow-wows seems not to have made much of an impression on today’s Google searches, but it appears to me to mean the state has gone to the dogs.)

Finally, Indianola was well established in 1895 and as such was building the first Masonic Temple in Red Willow County. “Indianola came near to losing her new Masonic Temple, Sunday afternoon, by fire. A stove, which was being fired to dry the plastering, fell over-becoming unsteady on its legs-and the interior was damaged about $300 before the fire was discovered and extinguished. Quite a hole was burned in the floor where the stove stood, besides the building was damaged by smoke and water. Though this misfortune will temporarily discommode and embarrass the Temple builders, yet the are heroically at work repairing the loss, and announce that they will dedicate the building on the date already advertised-the 27th day of December.

SWNGS Library is open on Tuesday and Thursdays from 1-4 PM. We are located at 322 Norris, McCook’s historic Temple building, rooms 2-7. There is an elevator for your use.