Pawnee Park is a lovely community greenspace along the Loup River near its confluence with the Platte River. Emigrants travelling on the North Branch of the Oregon trail passed through this area on their way west from 1846-1869, when the railroad was completed, making the old Oregon Trail wagon road obsolete.
From the Historical Marker database, specifics of the location of this monument: (
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"Location. 41° 25.363' N, 97° 22.122' W. Marker is in Columbus, Nebraska, in Platte County. Marker is on 33rd Avenue (U.S. 30/81) near 7th Street, on the right when traveling south. Marker is at the Quincentenary Belltower at Pawnee Park."
The marker is a white marble statue of an emigrant looking west, with a fading representation of a Native American in a cloud behind the emigrant.
From the Oregon Trail pamphlet published by the State of Nebraska: (
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"[page 7] Well known "Plum Creek" was Pony Station No. 16 and everyone agrees on the name and the place, the SW corner of Sec. 8, T.8N, R.20W, about 10 miles southeast of Lexington. Nearby is a small cemetery where there are buried fourteen victims of an Indian attack on June 16, 1965, Other accounts and well documented by military records of Fort Kearny and telegraph copies put the date as August 7th, 1864 with eleven men as victims. Plum Creek was first noted as a good campsite and later became an Overland [page 8] Stage Station and Pony Express Station, which was located near the creek. After the Sioux Indian attack on August 7, 1864 a small garrison of troops were stationed at Plum Creek. On the Oregon Trail in these troubled days numerous small garrisons were established by troops sent from Fort Kearny to build new ones or fortify old road ranches as far east as Columbus and two on the trail between Rock Creek Station and the Platte River and west of Fort Kearny, at intervals all the way to Julesburg."
From the Columbus Telegram: (
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"Overland Trail was once Main Street Columbus
By Gordon L. Steinbrook / Special to The Telegram Mar 20, 2016
Not many towns can boast of once having a famous overland covered-wagon trail as its main street. Columbus can.
During the heyday of covered-wagon travel west, the northern branch of the Overland Trail was, for a few blocks, main street (Seventh Street) Columbus. All told, of the 350,000 covered-wagon emigrants who went west prior to 1867, the northern route accounted for an estimated 100,000. From May 1856 on, that meant passing through Columbus on Seventh Street, the trail by then a wide, well-beaten highway.
The northern route of the Overland Trial had been blazed and used by Indians, explorers and fur trappers at first. Then in April 1847, Brigham Young led the first group of Mormon pioneers west from their winter quarters on the Missouri River toward the Salt Lake Valley of Utah.
The route they followed ran on the north side of the Platte River. They arrived at the future site of Columbus on April 21. The trail entered the future town site from the southeast, followed the higher ground just north of the Loup River, passed at the northern end of where the 33rd Avenue viaduct now is and continued on to the northwest because the Loup River was so swollen they couldn’t cross.
Staying on the north side of the Loup they headed around the bend in the river in the Shady Bend area and continued on to today’s Genoa-Fullerton area. There they forded the Loup and later established a ferry.
For the next 20 years, tens of thousands of Mormons rode wagons, pushed or pulled handcarts, and walked to Utah. For a time the trail was known as the Mormon Trail, however, emigrants rushing west to California for gold or land in Oregon soon outnumbered the Mormons and the trail became more commonly called by other names. It was called the northern branch of the Oregon-California Trail, the Council Bluffs Road, the Omaha Road, the Omaha-Denver Road, and the Omaha-Fort Kearny Military Road. After May 1856, by whatever name it was called, the trail for a few blocks was Seventh Street Columbus.
By 1848, the northern branch of the Overland Trail was one of five major approaches to Fort Kearny from jump-off points along the Missouri River. The other four approach routes were from Independence, St. Joseph, Fort Leavenworth and Nebraska City. Eventually, the north branch also became the Western Stage Company route to Fort Kearny.
The trail entered Columbus at about Fifth Street and 12th Avenue, went in a northwesterly direction until reaching Seventh Street and 15th Avenue, and then proceeded west on Seventh Street before either turning southwest and crossing the Loup by ferry boat (now the East Pawnee Park area) or going on northwest toward the Genoa-Fullerton area to ford or ferry the Loup there before turning southwest to the Platte.
Trail traffic was especially brisk during the gold rush to Colorado in the late 1850s. Two-way traffic moved both west and east. Many of the empty freight wagons returning east were hooked together in threes and fours pulled by several yokes of oxen.
Loaded wagon trains, traveling west, some as large as 100 to 200 wagons, carried people and all manner of freight ranging from mining equipment and food supplies to cargoes of liquor, champagne and frozen oysters.
The Columbus ferry across the Loup was a bottleneck and wagons lined up three-a-breast on Seventh Street waiting their turn to cross.
During the first six months of 1859 alone, the Loup ferry, just southwest of the brand new American Hotel, transported 1,087 wagons, 5,401 men, 424 women, 480 children, 1,610 horses, 6,010 oxen, 406 mules and 6,000 sheep. Wagon trains waiting to cross camped to the south between Seventh Street and the Loup River.
Columbus founders have often been heralded as forward-thinkers for establishing a town along where they hoped the future transcontinental railroad would run. Realistically though, they must have simply understood that a town along the Overland Trail might make for wonderful business opportunities. Indeed by the 1860s, Columbus was a major supply point and outfitter on the trail deriving much profit from wagon trains passing through. Many Columbus settlers built their dwellings right along the trail (along Seventh Street) and utilized them as both homes and businesses.
By 1864, Columbus had quite a reputation for its business dealings along the trail. So much so, that during a major Indian scare in 1864 when Platte County settlers rushed to Columbus and constructed a stockade for security, Columbus was dubbed Fort “Sock-it-to-um.”
As the years passed, emigrants heading for the Mormon settlement in Utah or to Oregon or California had given way to gold or silver seekers rushing for Colorado, Nevada or Montana. In 1864, it was said that wagon traffic out of Omaha heading west was “one continuous string of wagons all of the time.”
However, 1866 was the last significant year of wagon travel. The Union Pacific Railroad reached Columbus in late May and pushed on west across Nebraska. The days of the Overland Trail that had brought profit and excitement to growing Columbus and its first main street (Seventh Street) had passed.
References:
Curry, The History of Platte County, 1950.
Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, 1969.
Steinbrook, The Columbus Town Company, 2006.
Ware, The Indian War of 1864, 1911.
Reprinted from the March 2008 issue of the Platte County Historical Society newsletter.
Gordon L. Steinbrook is a native of Nebraska who received his elementary and secondary education in Saline County. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is a retired U.S. and Plains history teacher who taught 36 years at Columbus High School.
He is a Vietnam War veteran and retired from the U.S. Army Reserve as a lieutenant colonel. Steinbrook is author of "Allies and Mates: An American Soldier With the Australians and New Zealanders in Vietnam, 1966-67," which was published by University of Nebraska Press in 1995.
In 2006, he wrote "The Columbus Town Company" in honor of the city's sesquicentennial celebration sponsored by the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce. Steinbrook is a member of the Platte County Historical Society Board of Directors. He and his wife Frances reside in Columbus.
Over the past 10 years Steinbrook has written monthly Platte County Historical Society newsletter articles. His articles appear in The Columbus Telegram with permission from the historical society and author."