12/18/2022 0 Comments Columbus telegram![]() ![]() During the decade, the population of the county grew threefold, and Columbus became the trade center for an eight-county area. Train believed that the capital of the United States should be in the geographic center of the nation, Īnd promoted Columbus as ".the new center of the Union and quite probably the future capital of the U.S.A." Ĭolumbus grew and prospered during the 1870s, as a result of both expanding agriculture in Platte County and traffic on the railroad. In it, he set aside a room permanently reserved for the President of the United States. He renamed the building the Credit Foncier Hotel, after his land company, Credit Foncier of America : 45 In the following year, seeing the nearby townsite of Cleveland as a threat to his plans for Columbus, he bought the only building on the site, a hotel, and moved it to Columbus. In 1865, he bought several hundred lots in the city. The energetic and eccentric promoter George Francis Train envisioned building "a magnificent highway of cities" from coast to coast along the Union Pacific route Columbus was to be one of these. The railroad reached Columbus in June 1866, when the city's population was about 75. The ferry across the Loup was replaced by a seasonal pontoon bridge, used in the summer and taken up in the winter. The Homestead Act, passed the previous year, attracted a host of settlers to the Plains and gave rise to increased emigrant traffic business. In that year, construction began in Omaha on the transcontinental railroad. Army, a ferry across the Loup was installed contemporary documents suggest that the Mitchell company had failed to act on its right to operate such a ferry. In that same year, at the recommendation of the U.S. It became the county seat shortly thereafter. In 1858, the Platte County Commissioners passed an act of incorporation making Columbus a town Īt this time there were 16 citizens. However, in 1857, the Pawnee signed a treaty whereunder they gave up the bulk of their Nebraska lands, save for a reservation on what is now Nance County, Nebraska. : 27–28Īt the time of its initial settling, the land Columbus occupied still belonged to the Pawnee. The two companies consolidated in November 1856. In 1855, Mitchell had obtained from the First Nebraska Territorial Legislature the right to operate a ferry across the Loup River. Mitchell, had laid out the townsite of Pawnee. Just west of the Columbus site, the Elk Horn and Loup Fork Bridge and Ferry Company, headed by James C. The townsite was selected for its location on the proposed route of the transcontinental railroad. The group took its name from Columbus, Ohio, where most of the settlers had originally lived. The site of Columbus was settled by the Columbus Town Company on May 28, 1856. Settlement and early history Ĭolumbus, seen from an airplane, looking south In the absence of a ferry or a bridge, most of these followed the Loup for a considerable distance upstream before attempting a crossing: the first major wave of Mormon emigrants, for instance, continued up that river to a point about three miles downstream from present-day Fullerton. įor travellers following the north bank of the Platte, the Loup River, with its soft banks and quicksands, represented a major obstacle. In the 19th century, the " Great Platte River Road"-the valley of the Platte and North Platte Rivers running from Fort Kearny to Fort Laramie- was the principal route of the westward expansion. In 1720, Pawnee and Otoe allied with the French massacred the Spanish force led by Pedro de Villasur just south of the present site of Columbus. The Otoe had moved from central Iowa into the lower Platte Valley in the early 18th century Īnd the closely related Omaha and Ponca had moved from the vicinity of the Ohio River mouth, settling along the Missouri by the mid-18th century. The Pawnee are thought to have descended from the Protohistoric Lower Loup Culture In the 18th century, the area around the confluence of the Platte and the Loup Rivers was used by a variety of Native American tribes, including Pawnee, Otoe, Ponca, and Omaha. ![]()
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