When William A. McAllister and his parents and their family came to Platte County in 1858, the unbroken prairie extended in all directions as far as one could see. They settled near Genoa at first, but one year later moved to their homestead south of Richland, then a part of Platte County.

The country around Columbus was so wild at that time that once McAllister brought down two antelope with one shot. He had been stalking the animals for more than half a day in the area just east of Columbus.

He was living in the Platte Valley during the severe winter of 1867-1868, when the ice in the river was four to six feet thick. Great gorges were formed, and in some places the river was three to five miles wide. It flooded the homes of settlers near the McAllister homestead, drowning their stock and causing great suffering and damage.

In that year, the water from the ice gorge in the Loup River flooded the home of James Haney, east of Columbus. James Haney was away from home herding cattle when the floods broke. His wife, Mrs. Haney, and son Johnnie, were in the house with Mrs. Haney's sister, Nan Meaney. When the water rushed into the house, they put the baby's cradle on the table and waited, waist-deep in water, for two hours before rescue crews arrived, while their household goods and other possessions floated about the room.

In 1870 John Walker and his family came overland from McGregor, Iowa, to settle in Platte County. There they settled on a homestead one and one-half miles south of the present town of Lindsay, Nebraska. The Walkers built a sod house on the homestead, but in 1873 they moved to a dugout in the bank of Shell Creek, in order to be near a water supply. Adjacent to his new dwelling, John Walker also built a small dugout for storage.

That summer a heavy rain fell in the vicinity of Lindsay, filling the ravines and small creeks leading into Shell Creek. The water rose rapidly until a depth of twenty feet was reached when, without warning, the deluge rushed in on the Walker family.

Two travelers from Antelope County, Charley Wilson and Jeff Guyer, had stopped at the Walker home for the night on their way home from Columbus. They helped John Walker get his family, along with some provisions, up a small ladder to a loft, from which the small children and household goods were loaded onto horses. Then Mr. and Mrs. Walker and the two visitors walked through the water, leading the horses to the sod house on high ground, where they formerly had lived. There they found William Connelly and his family, who also had had a narrow escape from the flood. Connelly's youngest sister, Mrs. Mogan of Lindsay, was near death when rescued. The two families remained in the sod house until the waters went down and they could return home in safety.



A first-hand account of a grasshopper plague is recorded by Mrs. Peter Swanson of Walker Township. Mrs. Swanson, the former Nellie Anderson, married Peter Swanson in 1872, and moved to the farm he had homesteaded two years earlier.

One day as she looked out of the window, Mrs. Swanson noticed that some seed corn which she had planted looked black. She went outside and soon discovered that the entire stalk was covered with grasshoppers. Thinking that she could save some of it for the horses, she at once gathered an armful. So rapidly were the grasshoppers eating the corn, that the stalks grew shorter while she watched.

Mrs. Swanson took the armful to the stable and returned to get more, but when she reached the stable with her second load, the first was already covered with grasshoppers, and the stable had become full of them.

She gave up all attempt to salvage the corn then and threw a loaf of bread into the yard, watching while the hungry insects rolled it over and over on the ground until it entirely disappeared. The grasshoppers traveled with the wind and as soon as it ceased to blow, Mrs. Swanson saw them alight and eat everything in sight.

This insect plague returned repeatedly for a number of years, completely destroying the crops. Platte County farmers used to try various means of getting rid of the pests. One of the more effective was to build fires around their gardens in order to protect the vegetables on which they depended for food. The smoke would act as a barrier and as soon as the wind picked up once more, the grasshoppers were carried on.