Lincoln: It Has a Ring to It

On July 29th, 1867, three men sat down in a private home in Lancaster, Nebraska,  a settlement of fewer than fifty people and voted to make it the capital of the state. Twenty-two years later, that same ground was home to fifty thousand people, seventy factories, eighty wholesale houses, and thirty-one miles of streetcar track.

In this episode, I take you on a walk starting at the spot where it began, then through Lincoln's Haymarket district, tracing the city that grew out of a prairie vote. Along the way, the first federal building built from Platte River limestone, an Omaha businessman who bet on Lincoln and an impressive overview of what those first twenty-two years of life brought to the Capital city. 

Happy Anniversary, Lincoln! 

This is part of the Iron & Power series. If you missed the first two, start with The Cheyenne Ring: Cattle Country's Power, and The Capital Ring: Power of the Platte.

For then-and-now photos, maps, and glimpses of the past, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram.

Want to learn more?

• Davies, Russ, and Robert E. Gallamore. "On the Spur to the Dome: How the Mile-Long Lincoln, Haitch Street & Capitol Railway Helped Build Nebraska's Monumental Tower on the Plains." Railroad History, no. 204 (2011): 52–63.
• Hayes, A.B., and Samuel D. Cox. History of the City of Lincoln, Nebraska. Lincoln, NE: State Journal Company Printers, 1889.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I walked past a historical marker here the other day at 14th and O on the side of Sandy's Bar. Most people probably walk past it and don't read it, but it mentions a place that was special in the last episode. The marker reads the founding of Lincoln on July 29th, 1867, in session at the frontier home of Captain W.T. Donovan, located 166 feet north, 638 feet east of this spot, the Nebraska State Capitol Commission, David Butler, Governor John J. Gillespie, auditor, Thomas P. Kennard, Secretary of State, located Lincoln, capital city of Nebraska, on this prairie, erected Nebraska Society, Sons of the American Revolution, July 29th, 1927. Which means if I would walk across the street, go roughly two blocks east and a half a block north, I would be standing where on the afternoon of July 29th, 1867, three men sat down, compared their notes, and voted to make this city the capital of Nebraska. I want to welcome you to Root in the Plains. I'm Nicole, your host, and as you can see, I mean here, we are taking a slight detour from what I plan to share today. But on the plains, you need to be ready for that shift in the wind. Back to our story. The three men were Governor David Butler, Secretary of State Thomas Kennard, and Auditor John Gilletsby, the Capitol Commission, authorized by the new state legislature to find a permanent seat of government south of the Platte River. I shared that they had been touring around since July 18th, spent the night with Ashland's Mosquitoes, had ice cream in Yankee Hill, and now they were here in Lancaster. A settlement of fewer than 50 people, tucked between Salt Creek and Antelope Creek, with no railroad, no waterway, and no particular claim to fame other than it was in Omaha. On the first ballot, Lancaster got two votes, Ashland got one. On the second ballot, Lancaster got all three. Governor David Butler stepped outside and announced the decision to the people waiting in the yard. I'm standing more or less where the yard was. There's no house here now. But on July 29th, 1867, right here, a growing city began. They just didn't know it yet. We're headed to the Haymarket where most of Lincoln's businesses began. Lincoln's first federal building went up starting in 1874. The post office completed in 1879 at a cost of 200,000. That was no small sum for a capital city that had barely existed seven years earlier. It's still standing here on 9th and O. And if you look closely, you'll notice the stone, gray limestone, quarried from Platte River, the same river that divided the territory into two, the North Platte and the South Platte, Omaha's side and everyone else's. Its stone ended up on the walls of Lincoln's first permanent federal building. In January of 1887, a man named H. T. Clark made a big decision. Clark had been one of the most prominent businessmen in Omaha for years, wholesale drugs among other things. And Omaha was still, by every measure, the bigger, more established city. But Clark looked at Lincoln and decided it offered better advantages for wholesale trade. So he picked up his business, moved it to Lincoln, and built himself a four-story brick and stone building, 100 by 150 feet on the corner of 8th P. Within a few years, the H.T. Clark Drug Company was doing more than a half a million dollars in business per year. An Omaha man chose Lincoln. Twenty years after Omaha lost the Capitol fight, its own businessmen were betting on the city that had beaten it. There's a page in a book published in 1889, 22 years after the vote that had started all of this, that I want to share. The authors are trying to describe what Lincoln had become in those two decades, and they wrote it this way. From the wild prairie hamlet in 1867, possessing less than 50 people, Lincoln has grown to a city of over 50,000 people in just 22 years. From an insignificant settlement in a wilderness without trade or developed resources, there has been built up here a property worth not less than $50 million. Here now are operated 70 factories, 80 wholesale houses, and 11 banks. The city possesses 38 churches, 26 schools, 13 temperance societies, five public libraries, 26 newspapers and periodicals, and nearly 200 moral, social, fraternal, charitable, and similar organizations. The state fair has been located at Lincoln for five years. The city possesses strong companies for supplying illumination by gas, the ARC, and also incandescent electric light. It has eight miles of paved streets, 20 miles of sanitary sewers, 10 miles of stormwater sewers, and an ample supply of waterworks. It possesses five streetcar companies, one of which has a capital of $1 million. And now they are operating 31 miles of track. Among its great enterprises are the stockyards and two large packing houses, three immense paving brickworks, and seven building brickworks, a large woolen mill, a paper mill, a cracker factory, two planing mills and woodworking factories. A large tannery, three foundries, and extensive stone cutting works. Out of prairie sod in 22 years, from 50 people to 50,000. The summer has been about getting out and finding stories in the field. Fort Atkinson, and now this three-part series about Wyoming and the Platte that ends right here in Lincoln. I've loved every minute of it, and I'm already thinking about where to go next. Maybe even the Little Blue River. Or if you live somewhere in the Great Plains and have a great story idea that's waiting to be told, a place, a person, a moment that shaped where you live, I want to hear about it. I would genuinely love to bring this show to your corner of the plains. Send me an email at rootedintheplains at outlook.com or fill out the form linked on Instagram. And I'm still looking for guests to join me on what's your plains story this fall. If you've got a story and want to tell it, same email, same form. I'd love to hear from you. Oh, and if I haven't mentioned it, I built a website. It's almost ready. I'm very excited about it. More on that very soon. Thanks for listening to Rooted in the Plains. I hope you learned something new today. For some then and now photos, maps, and a little glimpse of Plains life, visit the Instagram page Rooted in the Plains. Thanks.