The site of Hemingford was first settled by Canadian immigrants in the summer of 1885. A town company was organized in 1886 and land was sold to the Lincoln Land Company which formally platted the townsite. The cluster of frame and sod buildings was named in honor of Hemmings Ford, the Settlers' former home.
Much of Hemingford's early history involved the location of the Box Butte County seat. After the county was created from southern Dawes County in 1886, the courthouse was built in rival Nonpareil. Later, in an 1890 election, Hemingford secured the prize with the backing of the Lincoln Land Company which wished to promote the community's growth. County offices remained here until 1899 when voters designated Alliance the permanent county seat in still another bitterly-fought election. The courthouse was moved on the Burlington railroad from Hemingford to Alliance.
This area became noted for the production of alfalfa seed and potatoes. In 1930, 1,893 carloads of potatoes were shipped from Hemingford and the town was known as the "Potato Capital of the World". Today Hemingford remains an important agricultural center for the northern panhandle.
]]>Beginning in 1874 thousands of freight wagons and stagecoaches passed here along the Sidney-Black Hills Trail. The route first supplied the Sioux at Red Cloud Agency on the White River and the troops at adjacent Camp Robinson. The southern terminus of the trail was at Sidney, Nebraska, on the Union Pacific Railroad. The 1874 discovery of gold in the Black Hills soon gave the trail new importance. Within two years it had been extended to Deadwood and other settlements in the Black Hills. Until about 1880 much of the freight for these mining camps was shipped from Sidney over this route. The peak 1878-1879 trade was estimated at more than twenty-two million pounds.
]]>A flat-topped hill to the southeast was named Box Butte by early cowboys and travellers. This area is part of the Box Butte Tableland, semi-arid short grass country that stretches far to the west.
Box Butte has given its name to the creek that flows near its base, a village, and the county where it is located. It served as a landmark for miners and freighters to the Black Hills during the gold rush of the 1870's. Box Butte City was founded east of here in the mid-1880's. A cluster of sod and frame buildings housed a post office, grocery and drug store, land locator's office, livery barn, hotel, restaurant, two blacksmith shops, and a cream station. A small sod church was built west of the village. The town died when the post office was discontinued in 1910 and only the pioneer graves remain.
Box Butte County was created in 1886 from lands in Dawes County. Heavy advertising campaigns by the railroads spurred its early growth. The Kinkaid Act of 1904 increased the size of homesteads from 160 to 640 acres and aided in the economic recovery of the county following the depression and drought of the 1890's. The landmark remains as a rugged memorial to those hardy pioneers who settled "Box Butte Country."
]]>In the spring of 1942 the U.S. Army selected a site one mile south of here for an airfield. The dry climate and open landscape afforded ideal flying conditions. Ample water, cheap land, and Alliance's new power plant, new hospital, and railroad division point were other attractions. Five thousand construction workers descended upon Alliance, population 6,669, creating a housing shortage. By July four 9,000-foot runways had been completed.
The 31,489-acre field's primary mission was to train aircrews of C-47 and C-53 transports and CG-4 gliders, along with the airborne troops they would carry into battle. The field contained some 775 buildings and housed 12,500 military personnel at its September 1943 peak. The 411th Base Headquarters Squadron, 403rd and 434th Troop Carrier Groups, 326th Glider Infantry, 507th Parachute Infantry, and 878th Airborne Engineers trained here before deployment to the European Theater. In June 1945 veteran troops arrived to train for the expected invasion of Japan.
The field was declared surplus in December 1945, and most buildings were sold. Part of the field was transferred to Alliance for use as an airport.
For more (including 2 images & 1 video) view the original article
]]>By the mid-1880s the Sandhills had become an important cattle-raising region. The extension of the Burlington and Missouri Railroad westward through the Sandhills in 1877-1888 made ranching more profitable by making more accessible eastern markets. By 1888 the Burlington had reached burgeoning Alliance, planned as a railroad junction and named by B & M engineer J. N. Paul. Material for building the Belmont Tunnel (about 30 miles northwestward), supplies for the Newcastle, Wyoming, coal mines, and equipment for grading camps on the line between Alliance to Newcastle were freighted overland from Alliance while it served as the Burlington's western terminus.
Locomotive Number 719, built at the Havelock, Nebraska, shops about 1903, was used for most of its half century of service on the Burlington's Alliance Division. Late in its career 719 was used on the Sterling, Colorado, to Cheyenne, Wyoming, branch line. Representative of the steam-power era of railroading, it was one of the K-4 locomotives, mainline passenger types, built at Havelock. The 86-ton engine, donated by C B & Q to the city of Alliance in 1962 and refurbished by Burlington Northern volunteers, is now located on land donated to Alliance by John D. Nielsen.
]]>