Drucken Lesezeichen hinzufügen

Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA



 


Notizen:
Wikipedia 2017:

Columbus is a city in and the county seat of Platte County, in the state of Nebraska in the Midwestern United States. The population was 22,111 at the 2010 census.

History:

In the 18th century, the area around the confluence of the Platte and the Loup Rivers was used by a variety of Native American tribes, including Pawnee, Otoe, Ponca, and Omaha. The Pawnee are thought to have descended from the Protohistoric Lower Loup Culture; the Otoe had moved from central Iowa into the lower Platte Valley in the early 18th century; and the closely related Omaha and Ponca had moved from the vicinity of the Ohio River mouth, settling along the Missouri by the mid-18th century. In 1720, Pawnee and Otoe allied with the French massacred the Spanish force led by Pedro de Villasur just south of the present site of Columbus.

In the 19th century, the "Great Platte River Road"—the valley of the Platte and North Platte rivers running from Fort Kearny to Fort Laramie— was the principal route of the westward expansion. For travellers following the north bank of the Platte, the Loup River, with its soft banks and quicksands, represented a major obstacle. In the absence of a ferry or a bridge, most of these followed the Loup for a considerable distance upstream before attempting a crossing: the first major wave of Mormon emigrants, for instance, continued up that river to a point about three miles downstream from present-day Fullerton.

The site of Columbus was settled by the Columbus Town Company on May 28, 1856. The group took its name from Columbus, Ohio, where most of the settlers had originally lived. The townsite was selected for its location on the proposed route of the transcontinental railroad.

Just west of the Columbus site, the Elk Horn and Loup Fork Bridge and Ferry Company, headed by James C. Mitchell, had laid out the townsite of Pawnee. In 1855, Mitchell had obtained from the First Nebraska Territorial Legislature the right to operate a ferry across the Loup River. The two companies consolidated in November 1856.

At the time of its initial settling, the land Columbus occupied still belonged to the Pawnee. However, in 1857, the Pawnee signed a treaty whereunder they gave up the bulk of their Nebraska lands, save for a reservation on what is now Nance County, Nebraska.

In 1858, the Platte County Commissioners passed an act of incorporation making Columbus a town; at this time there were 16 citizens. It became the county seat shortly thereafter. In that same year, at the recommendation of the U.S. Army, a ferry across the Loup was installed; contemporary documents suggest that the Mitchell company had failed to act on its right to operate such a ferry.

Growth of the town was slow until 1863. In that year, construction began in Omaha on the transcontinental railroad. The Homestead Act, passed the previous year, attracted a host of settlers to the Plains and gave rise to increased emigrant traffic business. The ferry across the Loup was replaced by a seasonal pontoon bridge, used in the summer and taken up in the winter. The railroad reached Columbus in June 1866, at which time the city's population was about 75.

The energetic and eccentric promoter George Francis Train envisioned building "a magnificent highway of cities" from coast to coast along the Union Pacific route; Columbus was to be one of these. In 1865, he bought several hundred lots in the city. In the following year, seeing the nearby townsite of Cleveland as a threat to his plans for Columbus, he bought the only building on the site, a hotel, and moved it to Columbus. He renamed the building the Credit Foncier Hotel, after his land company, Credit Foncier of America; in it, he set aside a room permanently reserved for the President of the United States. Train believed that the capital of the United States should be in the geographic center of the nation, and promoted Columbus as "...the new center of the Union and quite probably the future capital of the U.S.A."

Columbus grew and prospered during the 1870s, as a result of both expanding agriculture in Platte County and traffic on the railroad. During the decade, the population of the county grew threefold, and Columbus became the trade center for an eight-county area. The Black Hills Gold Rush in 1875 led the city's merchants to promote it as a staging and outfitting area for gold seekers, who could ride the railroad to Columbus and then travel overland to the gold fields.

In 1879, Columbus became the focus of a war between railroad companies. The Burlington and Missouri proposed to develop a line from Lincoln through Columbus and into northwestern Nebraska, and urged the citizens of Platte County to vote a bond of $100,000 for construction expenses. Union Pacific financier Jay Gould, displeased at the prospect of competition, informed the voters of the county that if the measure passed, he would do his best to ruin Columbus. After a heated campaign, the measure passed despite Gould's threats. The Burlington and Missouri built a line from Lincoln to Columbus, but stopped there; for their diagonal route across Nebraska, they chose one that crossed the Union Pacific at Grand Island rather than Columbus.

Gould sought to make good on his threat. When the Union Pacific developed its subsidiary Omaha, Niobrara and Black Hills Railroad, he directed that it cross the Loup River at Lost Creek, then run south to join the Union Pacific's main line at Jackson (since renamed Duncan), bypassing Columbus. Fortunately for Columbus, an ice jam destroyed the Lost Creek bridge in the spring of 1881. Railroad officials agreed to reroute the line down the north bank of the Loup to Columbus in exchange for a $25,000 contribution from the city.

In 1911, the Meridian Highway project was launched with the formation of a Meridian Road association in Kansas. Later in that same year, John Nicholson, originator of the highway, spoke at a meeting in Columbus, at which the Nebraska Meridian Road Association was organized. The proposed north-south transcontinental highway crossed the Platte and the Loup rivers at the Columbus bridges. In 1922, it was designated a state highway. The completion of the Meridian Bridge in 1924, replacing a seasonal ferry across the Missouri River at the Nebraska-South Dakota border, made the highway a year-round route from Canada to Mexico. In 1928, the route became U.S. Highway 81.

In 1913, the Lincoln Highway was established as an east-west transcontinental highway. It followed the Platte River route across Nebraska; ultimately, about half of its mileage was on the Union Pacific right-of-way. It also crossed the Loup on the bridge at Columbus. In 1926, the route became U.S. Highway 30.

Traffic on the two transcontinental auto routes through and near central Columbus spurred a burst of commercial construction. Hotels were expanded and new ones built; service garages were opened. To make the route through Columbus more attractive to motorists, the city undertook to illuminate and pave the downtown streets. By 1925, all of the city's major commercial thoroughfares were paved, and almost every lot along 13th Street (the Lincoln Highway) between 23rd and 29th Avenues was occupied by a commercial building.

Rural Platte County suffered badly from the Great Depression. Grain and livestock prices had been high during World War I, engendering a bubble in farmland; to acquire additional acres, farmers had secured them with mortgages not only on the newly purchased land, but on their older holdings. The fall in the prices of agricultural commodities, combined with drought-induced crop failures in 1934 and 1936, forced many such farmers to abandon their lands.

The civic and commercial leaders of Columbus aggressively sought federal and state funds for local construction projects during this time. In 1931, the Meridian Viaduct was completed, carrying the combined Meridian and Lincoln highways across the Union Pacific tracks and eliminating a grade-level crossing. In 1930–31, the aging and inadequate bridge across the Platte was replaced; in 1932–33, a new bridge was built at the Loup crossing.

Ort : Geographische Breite: 41.43029730000001, Geographische Länge: -97.3593904


Geburt

Treffer 1 bis 11 von 11

   Nachname, Taufnamen    Geburt    Personen-Kennung 
1 Gehring, Jeanne Kay  12 Apr 1959Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160728
2 Hellbusch, Luella Marcella  23 Mrz 1922Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160799
3 Janssen, Twila Ann  9 Dez 1945Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160844
4 Jones, Evelyn  3 Jan 1923Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160721
5 Keefer, Richard William  21 Jul 1931Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I94475
6 McKoski, Josephin Monica  22 Feb 1910Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I15371
7 McKoski, Roy Andrew  6 Nov 1907Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I3316
8 Osten, Gordon  23 Mrz 1945Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160785
9 Ostrander, DeWayne H.  24 Jul 1921Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I21073
10 Tschudy, Harley L.  5 Apr 1901Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I35378
11 Weissenburger, Rosina  30 Mai 1880Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I89899

Tod

Treffer 1 bis 23 von 23

   Nachname, Taufnamen    Tod    Personen-Kennung 
1 Dupay, Dorothy  18 Dez 1995Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I88952
2 Fittje, Lorraine M.  22 Dez 2010Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160739
3 Gehring, Clarence L.  21 Aug 2006Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160769
4 Gehring, Jeanne Kay  11 Mrz 2008Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160728
5 Gehring, Julius G.  26 Jun 2015Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160738
6 Gehring, Walter F.  16 Mai 2002Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160726
7 Hassebrook, Mefanda  1 Aug 1955Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160768
8 Hulsebus, Orton V.  27 Mrz 2005Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160745
9 Janssen, Elsie L.  12 Jul 1984Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160770
10 Janssen, Gerhard  30 Jul 1967Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160782
11 Janssen, Harold J.  15 Apr 2005Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160794
12 Kruse, Grace  22 Aug 1999Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160727
13 Mark, Jerome Leo  3 Jul 2004Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160856
14 McCormick, Dolores Jeanne  5 Mai 1999Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I163624
15 Mundil, Milo J.  24 Sep 2006Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I163601
16 Osten, Harold M.  31 Dez 2006Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160784
17 Romberg, Arlene E.  5 Jan 1999Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160843
18 Schaffnit, Charles W.  25 Jan 1944Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I197610
19 Siebler, Emma Caroline  10 Jan 2005Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160694
20 Siebler, Harold Duane  10 Jan 2015Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160671
21 Siebler, Leopold  3 Aug 1955Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I160668
22 Wheeler, Ray  Jan 1968Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I94473
23 Zimbelman, Marilyn  12 Nov 2012Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I8815

Beerdigung

Treffer 1 bis 2 von 2

   Nachname, Taufnamen    Beerdigung    Personen-Kennung 
1 McCormick, Dolores Jeanne  Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I163624
2 Schöck, Christina  Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA I144705

Eheschließung

Treffer 1 bis 3 von 3

   Familie    Eheschließung    Familien-Kennung 
1 Edwards / Michael  9 Sep 1939Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA F11001
2 Fuehrer / Tubbs  6 Sep 1967Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA F53933
3 Hulsebus / Gehring  22 Jun 1951Columbus, Platte County, Nebraska, USA F52953