Hogs wallow in muddy streets in 1883 McCook

These paragraphs have been taken from the three-ring notebook labeled H.P. Waite and donated to our library by the estate of Zolona Chinn, one of the founders of our society. Because there is a mixture of information contained within this notebook, I can’t determine if all of it came from H.P., but the stories are too good to not share. Most of these writings are exceptionally large and I can only share portions each week but if something catches your eye and you want to read further, the book will be back in the library when we open in September.

“ 1883: McCook is a typical frontier town. A hundred wooden buildings, cheaply constructed, most of them small, many of them unpainted, none of them having the slightest pretensions to architectural symmetry, are scattered along the north side of the railroad track. Not a vestige of shade protects them from the sun which has blazed on them this summer, with temperatures ranging many days above 100 degrees in the shade. On at least one day the mercury raised 108 degrees. In dry weather, the dust is stirred by every breeze, and in wet weather the streets in the business district are all but impassable from mud. Outside the central part of the village the streets are merely trails.”

“But that is not all that is wrong with this town. The merchants remove their goods from the packing boxes in which they are shipped at the entrances to their places of business, and turn the straw and hay and papers in which their merchandise has been packed loose to become playthings of the winds. Housewives and hotel cooks alike throw their garbage into back yards or into the streets where, in the sweltering heat, flies breed in countless numbers to swarm through unscreened doors and windows, - to alight in black clouds upon the food set on dining room tables, and on the prunes, the dried apples and apricots and the cheese on grocers’ counters.”

“Butchers do their killing in the rear of their shops and leave the offal to fester in the sun where it would remain doubtless until, like all dead animal matter, it is returned to earth if it were not found by vagrant dogs.”

Around the town well (the town well was on lower Main street in front of Lataurettes-now Jennings and Hoyts Hardware store) the hogs with which the streets are infested have made wallows to which they resort in the heat of the day and from which intolerable stenches arise.”

“Cows are tethered on vacant spaces, or when the individual animals are sufficiently domesticated to be trusted are permitted to roam unrestrained.”

“Not a tree grows north of the railroad track, nor since mid-summer has there been any living green in all the expanse of prairie, except on the narrow ribbons on which grass and a few scrubby trees grow between which the shrunken river flows over its bed of sand.”

“Yet the whole world does not contain more gold than does the western sky at sunset, and when night comes down “the canopy of the stars” is draped peacefully, protectingly, comfortingly about the little settlement.”

Isn’t it still like that to all of us that live in this section of the world? I see many pictures of sunsets in Southwest Nebraska posted on social media, and aren’t we just the luckiest people because when the stars come out in our skies, we can marvel at their beauty? Our genealogy library is taking shape and we are so excited to share it with you. Until we open, you can still do research for free at www.swngs.org.