McCook at 1 3/4 years: 1884

In March, 1884, Frank Kimmel of the Tribune felt compelled to offer an update on the progress of McCook, which at that time was still three months shy of celebrating its second birthday. Almost from the beginning of McCook, the Tribune's Editor and the Editor of the Indianola newspaper had been trading almost weekly pot shots at one another. Apparently Mr. Kimmel took exception to what he perceived as disparaging remarks from his Indianola counterpart and thought that it was time to set the record straight.

The Rivalry: March 6, 1884: Keen rivalry exists between Indianola and McCook. Indianola is nearly ten years older than McCook, and at an election held in May, 1873, was selected as the County Seat. While Post Offices have been established in different parts of the County, Indianola was really the only town in Red Willow County until McCook became the division point for the railroad, in 1882. The citizens of Indianola and those of McCook are not unfriendly -- in fact, there is more or less social intercourse among the inhabitants of the two places. Indianola has had a newspaper for some time and the Tribune was started in McCook about the time the Lincoln Land Company laid out the original town plat, in 1882. The editors of the two papers have engaged in an exchange of epithets that must all but have excluded their respective publications from the mails.

The latest outbreak on the part of the Tribune was precipitated by an assertion in the Indianola paper that McCook was a town of about 400 inhabitants, chiefly employees of the railroad company -- that its people had exhibited no little enterprise, as evidenced by the erection of a church building and a wagon bridge across the river, that owing to impurities in the water, obtained from ordinary wells, a system of waterworks had been established, and finally that the town contained two general stores, a barn, two hotels, a lumber yard and a saloon.

These statements provoked the Tribune to say that McCook "contains not one soul less than 700 people, that fully one hundred people had moved into McCook in the preceding month, and that more were coming every day. McCook is described as being "situated midway between Lincoln and Denver, on the line of the B. & M, RR, of which it is a Division Station. The company has erected a fifteen stall Round House and Repair Shops, an Eating House, and Division Headquarters.

The United States Land Office for this district is at McCook. It brings, in the course of a year, crowds of land seekers to our town.

The Lincoln Land Co., at an expense of $25,000, has constructed a system of water works only exceeded by one city in the State of Nebraska -- Omaha. A substantial Wagon Bridge was recently completed over the Republican River at this point, and the streams of wagons, which weekly wend their way to McCook from the southern part of the County, and the Northern part of Decatur County, indicated the great increase of trade its erection has brought to our town. There are three Hotels, two General Stores, two Hardware Stores, two Drug Stores, two Meat Markets, two Lumber Yards, two Livery and Feed Stables, two Land Agencies, two Insurance Agencies, two Millinery Shops, two Harness Shops, two Flour and Feed Stores, one Photograph Gallery, and another in course of erection, one Bank, two Barber Shops, four Lawyers, three Physicians, one Resident Dentist, one Bakery, one Blacksmith Shop, three Contractors, each with a force of hands now busily engaged in putting up business houses and residences, and each having contracts that will require all of the coming summer to complete, one Tailor Shop, one Shoe Maker, one Grocery and Restaurant, one Jewelry Store, one Furniture Store, two Brick Layers, four Painters, one Billiard Parlor, and one Saloon.

McCook also has three Church Organizations, the Congregationalists, who have a church building, the Episcopalians, and the Methodists, the two latter worshipping in the Band Hall on alternate Sundays.

Building announcement (On Norris Ave, just north of B. St.): The building of a third General Store is now in the course of erection. When finished and stocked, it will be the best of its kind between Hastings and Denver. It contains two large store rooms on its first floor. The main part of the second floor will be the best proportioned and arranged hall for theatric purposes in the Republican Valley, complete with a commodious stage, dressing rooms and a ticket office

McCook, although but little over one year old, is today the best town in the Republican Valley. No town in Southwestern Nebraska, west of Hastings, has so many fine and substantial dwellings as McCook. None contains a more energetic class of business men; and we think we are not overstepping the bounds of fact when we say, "The Magic City has no peer in the Valley."

McCook has entered upon a season of prosperity. The demand for houses is much greater than the supply. It is the prevailing belief that more buildings will be built this summer than last, and the buildings will be in keeping with those already built, and an honor to our town.

The country surrounding McCook is as good as any in Red Willow County, and has been taken up rapidly during the fall and winter, and parties have refused $4 per acre for land within two miles of McCook. A number of houses have been built on claims in the vicinity, which will be occupied in the spring, and the matter of cultivation will be tested more extensively than ever before.

(Even in the midst of Mr. Kimmel's rosy recital of McCook's accomplishments, he was forced to comment on troubles in the religious community, not in McCook itself, but in rural areas of Red Willow County.) March 6, 1884: Religious services have been held at several points on the Willow this winter. As there are no church buildings, at least once a week services have been held at some of the settlers' houses. As no one has a very large house, these gatherings have been small. Those who have attended them have been earnest in their desires to improve the spiritual welfare of the community. It would seem as though the need for spiritual rejuvenation is great, yet on more than one occasion these meetings have been disturbed by the rowdyish conduct of young hoodlums, who, if they do not care for the better things of life themselves, should let those who take comfort in their religion, to do so without interruption.

The attitude of parents toward conduct of this sort, of which complaint has been made, is incomprehensible. One of the youngsters, who has made himself particularly obnoxious, boasts of having a supply of "red eye," from which he imbibes too freely, and too frequently. Another amused himself recently by setting up the family Bible as a target for revolver practice.

A report is current of a contemptible piece of vandalism from Stoughton (a settlement on the divide about half way between Danbury and Lebanon). The church at that place was forcibly entered, the seats in the building were torn loose from the floor, the furniture demolished, the windows broken, and the hymn books torn in pieces and thrown out of doors. It may be the perpetrators of this outrage do not themselves care for things sacred, but even fanaticism gives them no license to destroy property so dearly bought, as are the properties of this congregation. Our people are poor. In their devotion to a cause they deemed righteous, they contributed their mite to buy the pitifully cheap furnishings. To see what they cherished so ruthlessly destroyed, when because of poverty they cannot be replaced, is trouble indeed.

Source: H. P. Waite's collection of McCook Tribune stories