To
Sidney and Beyond!
Continuing east across Nebraska on October 10th,
“The Longest Day,” encountering so many Lincoln landmarks and Lincoln
markers. It meant a lot to us and other Lincoln
Highway aficionados; the green of Lodgepole’s park aftereven a short time of
shadeless Sidney; the cooling as the day went by and the sky softened. It’s hard to explain or even for us to
understand why there’s such satisfaction in knowing we found the road [though
Nebraska’s signage made it relatively simple].
The longing lingers to stay to delve into the details and get to know
people [Wouldn’t be hard in Lodgepole, population 318.]
The lingering will have to occur on another trip, as the
only interaction we remember from that day was seeking low-level tech support
at the local Verizon outlet in a hardware store, where the owner was kind
enough to give us Verizon’s tech support number, and ten minutes of time on his
business line.
Sidney, Nebraska, according to Wikipedia, was named for Sidney Dillon, president of the Union Pacific
Railroad. It was founded in 1867 by the Union Pacific and grew up around the
military base of Fort Sidney (also known as Sidney Barracks), where soldiers were
stationed to guard the transcontinental railroad from potential Indian attacks.
Eighteen miles east of Sidney one finds Lodgepole, a city
that in land and building size seems too large for the 318 population of the
2010 census. It was also built by the
railroad in 1867. After romping in the
park in Lodgepole and scurrying down to the old Opera House, we zoomed another ten miles to and through Chappell
before darkness set in.
According again
to Wikipedia, Chappell was platted in 1884
when the railroad was extended to that point. It was named for Charles Henry Chappell, a railroad
official. Lengthy and interesting
details on Chappell at
http://www.co.deuel.ne.us/webpages/about/history.html
Caught glimpses of Big Springs and the1885 Phelps Hotel [still operating, but not off
season], but missed a few sights and a town or two as we continued on to
Ogallala for the night.
This was more of a visual day than a wordy day....so please enjoy the movie below, and turn down the sound if you can't stand to hear an old-time band singing about beautiful Nebraska cornfields.
My creation: http://slide.ly/view/92a17e42d13cdc0d7a96751d1917c920
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