A Note from Cottonwood Corners

The Madison Daily Leader on April 28, 1902 reported that “The building used for a court house in Gregory County, at Fairfax, is a very crude affair.  It caught fire the other day and having no vault the records were saved only by carrying them out into the street.  The town is without water or any fire protection, and a farmer who happened to be close at hand with a water tank saved the building and town from destruction.”

In January of 1903 the Gregory County commissioners called for an election to be held on February 24, 1903.  The bond election was scheduled to make a decision on building a court house at Fairfax.  County officers were using rooms scattered all over town and this was their most needed improvement.  The law requiring counties to be organized four years before a court house could be built was the reason the bond election had not been held earlier.

The citizens of Bonesteel were making preparations to defeat the issuance of the election.  They hoped to be successful in securing the permanent location of the county seat.  If the $6,000 bond was successful, they believed that the removal of the county seat from Fairfax would not be possible.

On Tuesday, the 24th, each town vied with the other in getting out the voters all over the county.  When the result was determined it was found that the bond election failed by 66 votes.

The election was over, but the fun was just about to begin.  Fairfax alleged that Bonesteel had drawn upon the Indian reservation for votes.  They claimed that Indian women were encouraged “to fold their blankets buck style, and vote against the bonds.”  (Remember that in 1903 women were not allowed to vote.)  The allegations were denied by the folks from Bonesteel.  They said that the Indian had a right to vote, that he was a citizen of South Dakota, and had been for many moons.

The trouble did not end here.  Fairfax organizers, through W. R. Day, ex-deputy sheriff of the county, filed a number of complaints and more than forty warrants were issued for alleged fraud by Bonesteel supporters.

Bonesteel committees were appointed to watch for Fairfaxites and keep them under surveillance while in Bonesteel.  An array of legal talent was engaged for the legal battle to follow.  When the next circuit court was scheduled to meet, no one seemed to know what the outcome would be.

The Omaha Daily Bee in a February 27, 1903 story with a Bonesteel dateline reported:  “It is conceded that Fairfax will lose the county seat in a short time, and that the same will be located many miles west of its present location.  An extra supply of bonds has been ordered sent to Bonesteel, and when all its citizens and Indians have been arrested and the supply is exhausted they will order more.”

Late in 1903, The Fairfax Advertiser, the local weekly newspaper, in an effort to project a more favorable image of the community contained a story explaining the efforts of the business men to make Fairfax the leading trading and business center in that section of the county.  “Her people,” the story declared, “are noted for their hospitality, and are always ready to extend the glad hand to any good people who may locate among us.”

Congressman Charles H. Burke, in an early 1904 news release explaining his bill to open for settlement 400,000 acres on the Rosebud referred to Bonesteel as the county seat of Gregory County.  The story reported: “This land is surveyed, and Bonesteel, the county seat of Gregory County and the end of the extension of the Northwestern railroad from Verdigre, Nebraska, will be the distributing point.”  This inadvertent error did not make him very popular in Fairfax!

In an effort to simplify the method of determining and selecting townsites, the State Lands Board in June of 1904 decided to offer six different tracts in Gregory County for sale at points where it is probable they will be desired for townsite purposes.  The tracts selected for this purpose and which would be placed on the market by the state were:  NW Section 28 of St. Charles TWP, two miles NW of St. Charles; Section 25, Union TWP, section directly S of Herrick; NE Section 16, Union TWP, two miles NW of Herrick; Section 36, Rhodes TWP, 2 miles east of Gregory; Section 36, Edens TWP, one mile N of Gregory, Edens TWP, one mile N of Gregory, and Section 16, South Dixon TWP, one mile N of Dixon.

“Step on that lot and I’ll kill you,” was the common expression on the Rosebud reservation when it was thrown open to settlers on August 8, 1904.  The squatters who had staked out their claims earlier warned invaders at the point of a rifle or shotgun to keep away.  The fight for the county seat had already begun.

In January of 1905 bids would soon be opened for carrying the mail from Bonesteel to Gregory, via Herrick, Burke, and St. Elmo.  It was the intention of the post office department to establish a regular route to the new towns, giving the residents the best kind of mail service considering that they were then not situated on a railroad line.  Mail was to be delivered every day except Sunday.  As the mail delivery would be a feature of the new route, the farmers living along the proposed route would receive their mail each day, except Sunday.

Doc Middleton, a notorious horse thief who hid out along the Keya Paha and Niobrara rivers in Nebraska thought that the town of Herrick, fifteen miles west of Bonesteel, was destined to become the county seat in the future.

 

Author Clarence Shoemaker, originally published in the Gregory-Times Advocate on January 13, 2021