The winter of 1863 was a fierce, blizzard-ridden period when men and ox teams waited for the storms to break in order that they might set out after fresh supplies. Pioneer wives watched their cupboards with fearful eyes and no reassuring arm of transportation or communication reached out across the prairies to the families who waited alone.

On Shell Creek northeast of Columbus, John Kumpf set out with John Marohn to go to the county seat for supplies. The storm, which had been swirling about the region for days, grew worse and Kumpf, who had delayed longer in Columbus to await the mail, was lost on the return trip. He was found the next day, frozen to death in the snow, clutching a crucifix as he knelt in a final, desperate prayer.

After the fierce winter, the thaw in the spring of 1868 brought ever increasing hardships to the pioneers. Stock was drowned, homes flooded, and property washed away in the wake of huge melting ice gorges which swept all before them.

Again and again these seasonal tempests returned. In May, 1873, the Platte County newspapers reported that the volume of water in the Loup was so great that sixty-eight feet of the bridge over the north channel was swept away and four thousand dollars in repairs had to be invested by the taxpayers.

A fierce storm on September 1, 1887, once again tore away one-third of the Loup Bridge and did damage estimated at fifty thousand dollars to growing crops and livestock in all parts of the county.

During the early years lumber was extremely scarce on the prairie. Most of it had to be hauled in from Omaha and logs found drifting down the Loup River were frequently used for building log cabins. Rodents and snakes were virtual inhabitants in the damp sod houses. And from time to time raging prairie fires swept across the plains.

Every fall and spring the grass, dry from long days in the hot sun, was eager timber for fires started by Indians, hunters or campers in the region. To protect his home and haystacks. from the ravages of the fire, each settler broke a narrow strip of sod around his house. At some distance inside that, he broke another narrower strip and burned the grass between. This was called a "fireguard" and early in the fall the farm children helped their fathers to burn these strips.

A red glow against the sky was always the sign of a distant prairie fire. Sometimes a high wind drove the flames faster than a horse could run. Blazing tumble weeds and sunflower heads were caught up in the gust and whirled hundreds of yards across the prairie. The front of the blaze was termed the "headfire." It ran with the wind, jumping fireguards and even rivers in its path, until the level prairie looked like a lake of fire with a thick cloud of smoke rising over it. Backfires were started and men worked all night in the effort to save their crops, their homes and their lives.

A typical news item from the Columbus paper in 1878 had this to say about the prairie fire menace: "Captain Brown lost all his small grain; Henry Kluck, stables, hay and grain, saved house and furniture; Gus Kluck, grain, hay and considerable wood; Mike Burke, all his grain, hay, cattle sheds and corral; Larry Burns, all his personal property except house and granary; Mr. Barnes lost everything except house and furniture. The fire also burned a threshing machine belonging to the Jenny Brothers."

Fires in individual homes were also frequent and dangerous in the early days because of the lack of modern fire fighting equipment. In one tragedy the three children of Mr. and Mrs. Robert McPherson died in a blaze which leveled the McPherson home located at McPherson's Lake, seven miles east of Columbus. Mrs. McPherson, the daughter of James McAllister, had been visiting a neighbor with her husband when the blaze started, spreading so rapidly that rescue was impossible.

Epidemics and tornadoes both took their toll in those first trying years. "A cyclonic thunderstorm," wrote the local editor in the '70's, "passed through the sparsely settled section east of Columbus causing considerable damage to crops in its path. A wagon belonging to John Fechsel was picked up and carried several hundred yards, then set down again without being damaged."

The first town in Platte County was not, surprisingly, Columbus. It was Buchanan, which was actually registered at the Nebraska Territorial offices about a month prior to Columbus being recorded. The small town was located about 20 miles east of Columbus (approx. where Schuyler is now), although nothing remains of where it used to be.

The fall of 1861, the first one-story schoolhouse, built exclusively for educational purposes, opened its doors in Columbus. It stood west of Eighteenth Avenue, on Eighth Street, and one hundred and fifty-four students attended it in the late 1860's.

During the late 1880's, Columbus had a street trolley, which operated for almost 25 years. It consisted of 2 routes, one to the south of the railroad tracks, the other, going north. It was pulled along a set of tracks by a horse, and when it reached 'the end of the line', the driver would get out, unhitched the horse, and rehitch it to the other end. It was used until the early 1900's when Columbus began to use a more modern form of transportation...the automobile.

One of the first moves toward an organization of the community was made in 1873, when the Pioneer Hook and Ladder Company No. 1 was initiated in January. Five months later the volunteer fire-fighting group purchased a hook and ladder truck for eighteen hundred dollars and the Columbus Engine Company Number 1 was also created by joint action of the inhabitants of the town. A hand engine, costing two thousand dollars, was donated by the city to the company.


By 1882, fire-fighting equipment for Columbus had grown to include a hose cart, one thousand feet of hose and a two thousand dollar fire house, which the city erected in Frankfort Square. The membership of the hook and ladder company in 1882 numbered eighteen and its officers.

The city was divided into neighborhoods for the purpose of giving fire alarms; each district was provided with a telephone to communicate with the central office. The general fire bell was always rung followed by the proper number of rings for the district endangered. Tolling of the bell signified that it was a false alarm or that the fire was out. Thus did the volunteer firefighters know where to report for this --- one of the most important civic duties that could be performed.

The fire department, however, continued to perform with the aid of the city's primitive hand or horse-drawn ladder wagon until the formation of the W. Y. Bissel Hose Company on July 2, 1887. At that time it purchased new horse-drawn equipment and attained the status of the department as it exists in present-day Columbus.

And in 1909 the city council ordered a Seagrave combination chemical and hose truck, thus supplying Columbus with what was then the third piece of motorized fire equipment in Nebraska. (The ancient hook and ladder wagon was made over into a trailer.)


Also in 1873, Columbus was the focal point of trade, drawing from Colfax, Butler, Polk, Howard, Boone, Antelope, Greeley and Madison Counties for its customers. A steady stream of coming and going farm wagons kept merchants and their clerks busy until ten and eleven o'clock in the evenings and traffic was also heavy on the roads from Stanton, Pierce, Merrick, York and Hamilton counties for, with the exception of Omaha, no other town in Nebraska had the business that Columbus showed during this era. Even Denver, with thirty thousand population, did not equal the record of Columbus.

Grading began on a race track started by local racing fans on the Gottschalk land just outside the city limits. Unofficial racing had long been a feature of town life and "the bottoms of Columbus" was the scene of many a contest.

In 1887 Cockfights were also popular in Platte County.

Madison county, once known as "Izard", was named after the then Nebraska Governor Mark Izard.

And the Union Pacific Railroad was built through Columbus in 1866 - 10 years after the inception of our town.


One of the earliest community rituals in Columbus, revealing a pride in home and love of beauty, was the custom of tree planting as established on the first Arbor Day, in 1872. Herman Kersenbrock, son of an early Columbus citizen, described this practice as it had been explained to him by Chris Gisen, one of the first coopers at the Columbus Brewery (a cooper was a skilled woodworker who built the oak kegs and hogsheads used in lagering of beer).

Three of the groves in and around Columbus were planted previous to the establishment of Arbor Day and were known, as the Kummer, Higgins, and Stauffer groves. All bordered what is now Twelfth Avenue between Sixth and Eighth Streets. They were planted on the same day.

Platte County offered bonuses to those who planted the most trees by a designated day. The Kummer Grove consisted of four square blocks, twenty-four rows deep on all four sides of the four-square blocks in the tract. Later known as the Kopetsky Grove, it was located between Eighth and Sixth Streets on Twelfth Avenue, and consisted of several thousand ash, elm, cottonwood and black walnut trees. It was planted by Vincent Kummer, one of the original founders of Columbus.

The father of Andrew Higgins, Judge J. G. Higgins, planted the second grove, with fruit trees bordered by forest trees, consisting of two square blocks between Fourth and Sixth Streets; and Stauffer's Grove was the result of the effort of the former Platte County treasurer, John Stauffer. It consisted of three square blocks of forest and orchard trees.

Trees at either side of the Lover's Lane Road were planted at the same time. This avenue of trees that stretched southeast of Columbus has gradually disappeared. Today, we find only a trace of these groves.