History of towns surrounding McCook

There’s a reason why our Genealogical Society is called Southwest Nebraska. Perhaps it should cast an even wider net, but the majority of our state records are related to the region it is named after. It seems logical to me that in order for any of our towns, including McCook, to survive, we have to include regional populations from our rural areas, across the border into NW Kansas and no doubt reaching into the corner of NE Colorado when we proclaim the benefits of living here. After all, McCook most certainly wouldn’t have a budget of 1.2 million dollars from sales tax if only McCook residents shopped within the city limits. So, when we thank people for shopping locally, we should be thanking our regional shoppers also because they supply the bread for our butter.

McCook claims the fame of being the area that the railroad chose for the mid-point on the Omaha to Denver line. I suspect there is more behind that selection than is stated. After all, McCook wasn’t even a town until 1882 and was ratified as such in 1883. Yes, we had a nice flat bluff to put the rail yard on, but we certainly weren’t in the center between the two cities, actually Cambridge is probably closer to correct, and we didn’t have the only flat spot…this is after all, Nebraska, there is a lot of flat spots around.

Let’s take a look at the history of the towns surrounding us. Hiram Doing came to what is now Cambridge in 1871 and built a cabin and named the place “Northwood”. In 1874, a post office named “Medicine Creek” was established and two years later, in 1876, Doing sold his claim to J. W. Pickle who promptly platted a town and named it Pickletown. When the Burlington Railroad reached the town in 1880, officials renamed the town Cambridge. Cambridge, already platted, was incorporated as a town in 1885 with a population of over two hundred.

Indianola came into being when an Iowa group of men were headed to locate at the already platted town of Redwillow in 1872. According to history, the men got their wagons stuck crossing Coon Creek and rather than travel the additional six miles to Redwillow, they decided to claim land right there. When E. S. Hill offered his homestead for a townsite, D.N. Smith, a locator for the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad surveyed and registered a plat for the new town on Cook Creek, naming it Indianola after his hometown in Iowa. Indianola was named the county seat of Red Willow County in May of 1873

Norwegian descendants settled on the Blackwood Creek in 1873. W.Z. Taylor of the Lincoln Land Company platted the townsite of Culbertson, naming main street after himself but it wasn’t until a post office was assigned to the group that the name Culbertson was given to the town. Culbertson was selected to be the division point for the railroad between Hastings and Akron, CO, and a roundhouse was constructed on land owned by Taylor. When the railroad wanted to purchase his land, Taylor asked such an exorbitant price, the railroad moved the roundhouse to McCook decimating Culbertson’s population. Culbertson was incorporated as a village in 1885.

Fairview was a small settlement located on the banks of the Republican river when the Burlington & Missouri River railroad changed the division point to what is now McCook. In 1882, the Lincoln Land Company began platting the land surrounding the rails and the railroad named the town McCook after Major General McCook who fought in the Civil War on the Union side. The land office opened in 1883 and in December 1883, McCook was officially organized as a village. McCook was the late comer in this group of towns, the last platted and that may be the key. Once the railroad determined McCook to be a division point, the land boys had a field day promoting McCook and selling lots to those eager to join in the settling of the west. One person’s perceived greed may have made McCook possible.

Much of this information came from www.casde.unl.edu in a Google search for each town. There is a rich history to our area available online and at our website, www.swngs.org, and we hope to have our library open again in September.