Merrick County, Nebraska - Chapter 4: Interesting Events of Early Settlement, 1898

CO the settlers of these later days the sight of the Platte River practically without water in it is not an uncommon or sensational one. Irrigation west of our county has from summer to summer absorbed the volume of water which in times past flowed through Merrick County, and left us but one or two shallow channels in the entire breadth of the mile- wide Platte. But to the early settler such a state of affairs was not only unheard of, but decidedly alarming. So when in the summer of 1863 the Platte ran entirely dry, that fact and the causes of the occurrence fixed themselves firmly in the minds of those who shared in the alarm which was produced. The story is well told by Wells Brewer in his "Recollections of an Old Settler:''

The year of 1863 is remembered by the old settlers of Merrick County as a remarkable one on two accounts; one is the very severe frost that occurred in the latter part of the month of August; the other that the Platte river was, during nearly the entire autumn, a bed of dry, drifting sand, a thing hitherto unprecedented in the memory of the oldest settler. It is probable that the like had not occurred for many years before, for even the Indians had no tradition of a similar occurrence and seemed as much surprised at the unwonted phenomenon as the whites. On one or two previous seasons the June rise had been but a slight affair, and the river had run very low during the hot months; but this year the June rise was scarcely perceptible and by the aoth of August the great river had, for hundreds of miles above its junction with the Loup, dived completely beneath its sandy bed. The reason was undoubtedly the light fall of snow in the Rocky Mountains the previous winter - a winter of unusual mildness throughout the whole United States. But this cause for the strange freak of the river was not wholly understood by the settlers at the time and many feared that some land slide in the mountains had diverted the currents of some of the tributary streams of the Platte, in which case its dryness might be permanent. When the water was at its lowest stage, which was in the month of September, it could be obtained by digging in the lowest parts of the river bed to a depth of about two feet; but on the surface the sand was entirely destitute of moisture and was drifted about into all sorts of fantastic shapes by the wind; on some of the Islands it was piled in heaps to a height of five or six feet. Considerable difficulty was met with in obtaining water in sufficient quanti¬ ties for stock. Digging in the sand was of no consequence as on reaching water the quick sand immediately filled the hole. The experiment of curbing was resorted to, but it was difficult to get even a curb to stand long as the cattle tramping in the sand outside of them soon broke them in. As a consequence of this, the stock in the valley suffered considerably for water. However one morning about the first of November, on looking far up the river, something was seen to glitter in the sun that did not look exactly like sand; that it was water could hardly be believed; but it was water. In a few hours little rivulets of clear water were winding their way down the broad waste of sand and the Platte river was itself again.

Few of us can realize the sensation which the early settler must have experienced when the fearful possibility, suggested by Mr. Brewer's article, dawned upon him - a dread lest "some land-slide in the mountains had diverted the currents of some of the tributary streams of the Platte, in which case its dryness might be permanent."

To the early settler the waters of the Platte were the promise of his continued existence, and their permanent absence meant the return to a desert of all the country in which he had planted his new home. It was this fear, rather than the actual dryness of the river, that made the year 1863 memorable among the men of those days, and causes its record here as on>e of the "interesting events of early settlement."