When Burwell residents put on a local rodeo in 1921, the event was so successful that they made it an annual affair and built a permanent facility.
Nebraska’s Big Rodeo (NBR), its official name since 1925, was soon drawing crowds of 20,000 people a day. The rodeo persevered through severe drought and economic depression in the 1930s, and became an important stop on the national circuit.
No official rodeo was held 1943-45 due to World War II, but the Dearmont Ranch south of Burwell hosted rodeos during this time. In 1946 NBR enjoyed the largest crowds in its history. It expanded to a four-day event in 1948. Legendary champions such as Jim Shoulders and Casey Tibbs were regular competitors.
By the 1950s NBR added trick riders, chuckwagon races, and horse racing. As in the rodeo’s early days, Lakota performers shared their culture through music and dancing.
NBR and the Garfield County Fair are still held on the original 40 acres. The grounds include one of the world’s largest outdoor rodeo arenas, a 3/4-mile track, and the original wood-covered grandstands.
]]>Although the railroad was owned by the L & BH, it was leased and operated by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. The CB & Q bought the line in 1908.
]]>One of the worst storms in Nebraska history struck without warning on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873. Rain began to fall in the afternoon and evening, later changing to snow. By Monday morning heavy, wet snow, driven before howling northwesterly winds, had cut visibility to zero. The storm raged until Wednesday, April 17, accumulating as eighteen to twenty-foot drifts in some areas. Hardest hit was east central Nebraska, where as many as twenty persons perished, along with thousands of head of livestock.
Here in the thinly-settled North Loup Valley tragedy was narrowly averted. When the storm broke, Truman Freeland and young Newt McClimans were bathing in the river. Freeland reached shelter at a neighbor's cabin, but McClimans became separated. After the blizzard ended, searchers seeking McClimans's body found him safe in Freeland's dugout, upon which he had stumbled by accident.
Although Nebraska's sparse population helped keep the death toll relatively low, the Easter Blizzard of 1873 probably caused a greater loss of life as a percentage of population than any other storm in the state's history.
]]>In 1872-73 white settlers were moving into the North Loup Valley. Their presence sparked occasional conflicts with Lakota Sioux wandering down from the north to hunt or raid the Pawnee Reservation near Genoa. On January 18, 1874, Sioux passing through this area with stolen Pawnee horses purportedly took food, furs, and a cow from the homes of settlers and trappers, including the Colby and McClimans families.
Early the next morning about a dozen men led by Charles ("Buckskin Charley") White went in pursuit, determined to recover the property or fight the Indians. The men found the Lakota camped on Pebble Creek. During a parley, the Indians refused to surrender anything of value and prepared to resist the whites, who fled to the shelter of the stream bank. In the half-hour fight that followed, Marion Littlefield was shot and killed. Indian casualties were estimated as three dead and several wounded.
The settlers feared further confrontations and petitioned Congress for military protection. After receiving an appropriation, the army established Fort Hartsuff in the North Loup Valley on September 5, 1874.
]]>