Alkali Station played several important roles as a stopping place on the Overland Trail between 1859 and 1867. Established as a stagecoach relay station, it served as a Pony Express station in 1860-61, then as a base station along the transcontinental telegraph line. Alkali marked a point where the trail network fanned out toward various points to the west. As a large a road ranche through the 1860s, it provided travelers with supplies, rested stock, and repair facilities. Alkali Station became a fortified army post during the Civil War. It housed cavalry units charged with maintaining the western flow of people and goods. Fighting occurred at the station, and troops based there took part in combat against Northern Plains tribes. Alkali Station fell into disuse with completion of the transcontinental railway system. Sod structures and other facilities at the site were abandoned and allowed to decay. Never cultivated, it preserves evidence of its contribution to the development of the country’s transportation system. Efforts by land owners and their neighbors have recognized and preserved the site.
]]>By 1878 more than 300 Northern Cheyennes were desperate to escape their hated reservation in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Led by Dull Knife and Little Wolf, they headed for their homeland in the north, fighting their way across Kansas. At about noon on October 4, 1878, they arrived at a crossing of the South Platte River and the Union Pacific Railroad northwest of Alkali Station but east of Ogallala. Their arrival was observed and reported by telegraph to Fort Sidney.
Already aboard rail cars at the fort, the soldiers believed they could stop the Northern Cheyennes at this crossing. Arriving at 4 p.m., they began tracking the trail leading north, but the Cheyennes had already crossed the North Platte River and escaped into the Sandhills.
The Cheyennes soon parted ways. Little Wolf’s people made it home to Montana, but Dull Knife continued to northwest Nebraska. His group was captured and taken to Ft. Robinson. They escaped January 9, 1879, but most were captured or killed in a running fight known as the Cheyenne Outbreak or Fort Robinson Massacre.
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