Potter began as a small Union Pacific Railroad settlement and depot midway between Kimball and Sidney. The station house was built by Union Pacific in 1870 and, as the only building in the settlement, also served as the post office and school. Its proximity to Fort Sidney allowed for a company of soldiers to billet their animals one-half mile south of Potter. In 1885, with a population of 75, Potter was platted.
The presence of the railroad brought many farmers and ranchers to Potter during the 1880s. Drought in the early 1890s resulted in many of them leaving. A second wave of settlement occurred with the passage of the Kinkaid Act of 1907. The Village of Potter was incorporated in 1912.
This depot was constructed in 1885 and remained in use until 1971. It was moved to Buffalo Bend before being donated and returned to the Village of Potter in 1989. The citizens of Potter have made the preservation of the depot possible. It now serves as the Potter Depot Museum.
]]>Exposed on these slopes are two Tertiary age sedimentary rock formations, the Brule and the Ogallala. The Brule, the lower and older, is a brown siltstone containing volcanic ash blown into Nebraska from the western United States during a period of volcanism 28 to 32 million years ago. The Ogallala, the upper and younger, is a 6- to 12-million-year-old sequence of limy ledges and silty sandstone layers, some containing fossil grass roots, capped by a ledge of cherty limestone. Many of these ledges, in particular the cherty limestone, represent ancient soils that formed in a semiarid climate. Rocks representing about 16 million years of geologic history are missing at this site between the Brule and the Ogallala but are present elsewhere in Nebraska. Water for this rest area comes from fracture zones in the Brule. Without such fractures, the Brule would yield very little water. Oil and gas, discovered in this area in 1949, is produced from Cretaceous age sandstone around 90 million years old, at depths of about 5,000 feet below the land surface.
]]>In 1867 an Army tent camp was established near here to provide protection for Union Pacific Railroad construction crews. Three years later it became Fort Sidney, the nucleus for the town of Sidney, county seat of Cheyenne County. The rush to the Black Hills gold fields after 1875 confirmed Sidney's importance as a freighting center. The 267-mile Sidney-Black Hills Trail carried the bulk of traffic from the railhead to the mining towns. As railroads extended into northwest Nebraska and Dakota Territory, commerce on the trail diminished and finally ended about 1885. In its frontier heyday Sidney boomed with a colorful admixture of settlers, freighters, cowboys, and soldiers. Throughout these years Cheyenne County was a center of the cattle industry on the high plains. With the decline of the trail and the abandonment of the forts, Sidney became dependent on ranching. Early in the 20th Century homesteaders successfully challenged the cattlemen. Today ranching and farming combine to make Sidney an important agricultural center. In 1949 the first successful oil well in western Nebraska was drilled north of Sidney and petroleum production became a factor in the local economy.
]]>Cheyenne County was organized in 1870 from lands ceded by the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Dakota Sioux Indians. In the panhandle of Nebraska, it is part of the Cheyenne tableland portion of the Great Plains. Some fifteen miles west of Sidney lies the landmark, Point of Rocks. Nearby archeological discoveries confirm the existence of at least two prehistoric Indian cultures--the Upper Republican (1100-1400 A.D.) and the Dismal River or Plains Apache (1700 A.D.). Once almost entirely covered by buffalo grass, this region for millennia nourished the American bison. Characterized by limited rainfall and swept by strong winds, this has become a land of broad wheat fields and sprawling cattle ranges. Ranching began in 1869, and by 1882 over two hundred thousand cattle pastured here. In the late 1880's settlers found 160-acre homesteads too small to support dry-land farming and extreme drought and grasshoppers of the 1890's forced many to leave. The Kinkaid Act of 1904, granting 640-acre homesteads, resulted in another rush of settlement. Western travelers will follow the valley of Lodgepole Creek, used by the Union Pacific Railroad when constructing the first transcontinental line in 1867.
]]>The Golden Link embedded in Interstate 80 just north of here commemorates completion of the final portion of Nebraska Interstate Highway 80 between the Missouri River and the Wyoming border. This 455.3 mile long ribbon of steel and concrete is more than a smooth, wide roadway. It is a vital link between eastern and western Nebraska; a link that binds our state, culturally and economically, closer together. The Golden Link also commemorates Nebraska's accomplishment of being the first state in the nation to complete its mainline Interstate system. Nebraska's Interstate highway system is the most significant and the largest single public works project ever undertaken in this state. Beginning 19 years ago, March 8, 1955, with a small portion near Kimball, year by year, and mile by mile, it progressed steadily across the state. In developing fine roadside rest areas and a chain of lakes, our state has demonstrated that highways and the environment can be compatible. This final link in Nebraska's Interstate Highway 80 was formally completed and dedicated on October 19, 1974.
]]>Sidney Barracks, when established in 1867, was a temporary camp with one permanent structure, a blockhouse located to the north. In 1869 the Fort was relocated at this site and in 1870 the name was officially changed to Fort Sidney. The primary service of the Fort was in protecting construction crews from hostile Indians while building in Union Pacific. Fort Sidney became a major strategic point on the Plains in the mid-1870's. With the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, the town of Sidney and the Fort became the major supply point. The trail to Fort Robinson and the Black Hills was of strategic importance during the Indian troubles of 1874-1877 in serving freight wagons and stage coaches. At the same time, Sidney was an important trail town and railhead in the picturesque cattle business of the Old West. The last Indian alarm at Fort Sidney was the most dramatic. In 1878 the Cheyenne, under Dull Knife, broke from their reservation in Oklahoma and staged an epic flight across Kansas and Nebraska. A special train was kept ready at Sidney to be rushed either way to intercept the Indians when they came to the Union Pacific. On October 4 the train was rushed to Ogallala, but the Indians escaped into the sandhills. The post closed in 1894 and the buildings were sold in 1899.
]]>The history of Lodgepole has been closely associated with railroad development and overland travel in western Nebraska. It was originally established as a station when the Union Pacific Railroad was completed to this point in 1867. A company of U.S. soldiers from nearby Sidney Barracks camped here to guard the railroad against Indian attack, and during the early 1860's a Pony Express Station was located a few miles to the east. Lodgepole derives its name from Lodgepole Creek where Indians reportedly secured timber for their tipi poles. Little permanent settlement occurred until the early 1880's, and the town was platted in 1884. By 1886 it had a population of about 200 people. Stock raising was an important early industry, and many of the state's pioneer ranches were located in the region. This depot was constructed by the Union Pacific Railroad in 1887 on a site adjacent to the tracks. It replaced an earlier section house and was in use until 1968. In 1971 a gift from Mrs. Doris Bates Rowan in memory of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. B. J. Bates, made possible its preservation at this location, where it now serves as the Lodgepole Depot Museum.
]]>On August 9, 1949, the first successful oil well in western Nebraska came in for 225 barrels of oil per day at a total depth of 4,429 feet. Marathon Oil Co. completed the discovery well, Mary Egging #1, located four miles east and two miles north of this marker, and five miles southeast of the town of Gurley. The oil discovery ended 60 years of unsuccessful searching in western Nebraska. The first reported interest for oil occurred in 1889, near Crawford, in the northwest corner of the Panhandle. The first recorded drilling operation took place in 1903 near Chadron, also in the northern part of the Panhandle. In 1917, the first exploratory well to drill in the southwest Panhandle, near Harrisburg, failed. Oil searchers sunk many other dry test wells in western Nebraska until success came in 1949. Wells in the Nebraska Panhandle through 1966 had produced more than 216 million barrels of oil. Nebraska's first successful oil well was completed in 1940 in the southeastern corner of the state.
]]>Sioux Army Depot was established on 23 March 1942 as Sioux Ordnance Depot. It was the only U.S. Army Ammunition Depot in Nebraska during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The depot was initially under the command of the U.S. Army Ordnance Department and later the U.S. Army Materiel Command.
Sioux Army Depot's mission during its entire history was the receipt, storage, and issue of all types of ammunition from small arms to 10,000 pound bombs, all types of general supplies from small automobile parts to jeeps, and various strategic and critical materials.
The depot occupied 19,771 acres and included 801 ammunition storage igloos, 22 general supply warehouses, 392 support buildings, 225 family living quarters, 51 miles of railroad tracks, and 203 miles of roads. Depot personnel assigned ranged from 625 to 2,161 civilian employees and from 4 to 57 military personnel depending on Army activity. Sioux Army Depot was deactivated on 30 June 1967.
Dedicated by the Sioux Army Depot Employees on 25 July 1992.
]]>A distinct group of prehistoric hunter-gatherers known to archeologists as the Oxbow Complex once occupied the northern High Plains from western Nebraska to southern Canada. About 2500 B.C. a band of Oxbow people interred two of their own near here. The skeletal remains, found eroding from a road cut, were covered with red ocher and buried in a semi-flexed position. This interment of a young adult male and an infant in a single grave represents Nebraska's earliest documented burial. The Oxbow people participated in an extensive North American trade network. Copper from the Great Lakes and shells from the Atlantic Coast have been found at Oxbow sites. Exotic objects accompanying the Sidney burial included a neck ornament made from a turtle shell, raven bones, freshwater mussel shells, a large stone knife of local Kimball chert, and five amazonite pendants. The closest source of amazonite, which resembles turquoise, is the Pike's Peak region of Colorado. Jim and Becky Haddix of Sidney are credited with the 1992 discovery and subsequent preservation effort. The remains and associated funerary objects were reinterred in the Sidney cemetery.
]]>On June 1, 1926, George A. Coulter completed one of the first four irrigation wells in Cheyenne County, among the earliest in western Nebraska, on his farm just south of here. He and his son, James, dug the first twenty-two feet by hand. Charles Stanton, a Potter, Nebraska, driller, completed the final sixty feet to reach the Ogallala aquifer. The well pumped about one thousand gallons per minute, irrigating one hundred acres of corn, alfalfa, and wheat. Coulter sold the farm to Albert Nielsen in 1929; the well was still in use by Nielsen's sons in 2009. Irrigation from streams began in western Nebraska during the latter years of the nineteenth century. In the 1940s and 1950s the drilling of groundwater wells expanded rapidly, extending irrigation's benefits throughout the state. By the end of the twentieth century the self-propelled center pivot system, developed in Nebraska, had become a common method of irrigating crops. Irrigation helped transform the state into one of the nation's leading agricultural producers. In 2009 Cheyenne County had 631 registered irrigation wells, with more than 105,000 registered in Nebraska.
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