Part 3

Mr. Cadman was a man of vigor and action. Coming to Lancaster in 1859, he entered a quarter section of land on Salt creek, south of Lincoln. His first move was to open a cut-off (from the Oregon Trail) from Nebraska City to Fort Kearny, which he completed in time for 1861 spring travel. This was of great benefit to farmers on the Salt and Blue. In addition to his farming operations he established a trading post at the point where the cut-off crossed Salt creek. The post was also a station for the Lusbaugh line of stages between Nebraska City and Fort Kearny, where they connected with overland stages to California. He served in the territorial legislature, also the state legislature, first term. In 1867 he was a leading advocate for removal of the capital to Lancaster county—only he wanted it at Yankee Hill, south of Lincoln.

An old biography of Mr. Cadman says proudly that he never drank a glass of liquor in his life, not indicating, we hope, that he was a rare exception to a general rule. All in all he was a hardy and to-be-relied-on citizen, a worthy rival of salty old Elder Young, who founded the town of Lancaster and used his influence to get the capitol into Lancaster’s successor, Lincoln, instead of at Yankee Hill, where John Cadman wanted it.

No. 29—Marker on Burlington Station

On a hot afternoon in July, 1867—the 29th—Commissioners Butler, Kennard and Gillespie emerged dripping from the attic of Captain W. T. Donovan’s house. Standing on its east side to avoid the blazing sun Butler announced that henceforth Lincoln would be the capital of Nebraska. The severely fashioned Donovan house stood at the northern point of a triangle which would have included the Journal building and the Burlington station had they been built at that time. Why the commissioners took to the attic to vote on the site is not certain, but possibly they did not want to be rudely interrupted by those who had been insisting that it be located at Ashland, Seward or Yankee Hill, or be left in Omaha.

Captain Donovan came to Lancaster county in the mid-fifties. Captain of the steamboat Emma, one of the boats which plied up the Missouri as far as Plattsmouth, he was drawn to this region by the possibilities of salt in the Salt creek valley. His son was the first white child born in the county, his daughter the first Lincoln bride. He took the first homestead in the county under the 1862 homestead law. He stuck to his claim during the Indian scare of 1864 and helped protect settlers who had the courage to remain. The tablet was erected by the Nebraska Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.

No. 30—Marker at 14th and O

The name Luke Lavender seems inevitably to have been coined by some feet-on-the-desk writer of westerns, perhaps as a brother in literature to the outlaw Violet in MacKinley Kantor’s “Gentle Annie.” But Luke Lavender was not invented. He was a rather important citizen of Lancaster and Lincoln, often referred to as “Judge” and apparently also a builder of carriages. He put up the first house in Lincoln, at what is now the southeast corner of 14th and O—in 1864. It was a neat log cabin with two leantos, and to the south and east stretched Mr. Lavender’s farm.

Try, for a moment, to erase with one giant gesture all that now means Lincoln. Visualize a bit of lonely prairie, hummocky and irregular. A creek ran along the M and L street region. A hill of considerable height rose where the postoffice now stands. The silence was rarely broken. Light-footed antelope made no sound as their feet lightly trod the grasses and their delicate ears pricked at the sound of an occasional interloper. The night, however, was sharply punctured at intervals by howls of wolves and coyotes. To the west was the illusion of perpetual snows, for Salt basin was covered with an incrustation of salt about a quarter of an inch deep.

Mr. Lavender was an Englishman who came here with Elder J. M. Young in 1863. Among the party were Jacob Dawson, who a little later built half a mile to the west of Lavender, Dr. McKesson, Edwin Warnes, Thomas Hudson, John Giles, Uncle Jonathan Ball and others. These settled elsewhere in Lancaster county. It was Elder Young, leader of the colony, who laid out the town of Lancaster and a little later started a female seminary at 9th and P.

No. 31—Oak Creek Park

This is Oak lake, in Lincoln’s newest park—1st to 14th, Y to Oak, 279 acres. If you are unimpressed, please remember two things: First, a nice expanse of blue water is never to be looked down the nose at, especially in a prairie city. Second, it is a wonderful improvement on the magnificently proportioned dumping ground which used to occupy the same quarters, and over which roamed unfortunates peering and picking at bits of refuse. Things have been done to Oak creek, so that its main channel now runs thru the center of the park. Between it and Salt creek lies the lake, which members of the Lincoln boat club rejoice in as a place to hold races.

The park site was once a part of the great salt flats whose glistening white blanket drew early settlers to Lincoln. In fact, these saline lands took a prominent part in the early history of Lancaster county—in the courts, in politics, and elsewhere. Both Governor Butler and J. Sterling Morton were involved. Morton had put up a log cabin on the flats and pre-empted the basin in 1861. In 1870 Butler leased the flats. Endless complications and lawsuits resulted. In the end Butler was forced to pay thousands of dollars to the state.

The salt industry, from which so much had been hoped, failed for several reasons—importation of cheaper salt from Utah, the difficulty of forming large areas into drying pans, and the destructive rains and overflows which for 80 years have bedeviled the Salt creek bottoms. The last named situation the sanitary board has been battling with renewed vigor since the disastrous flood of May, 1942, with considerable promise of success.

Returning to the subject of parks, Lincoln is liberally sprinkled with them. We have 22, in assorted sizes.

No. 32—Pioneers Park, West Van Dorn

One day in 1928 John F. Harris, a New York financier who had grown up in Lincoln in the seventies and eighties, met a boyhood friend who still lived here. The rusty gate of memory swung back—it had been 40 years since Harris left Lincoln—and sharply accentuated before him stood the past. In a rush of deep affection for all that had gone into his boyhood he immediately resolved upon a memorial to his parents, to be located in the city in which he had grown to manhood. The result was Lincoln’s largest park. His boyhood friend—George Woods—picked out the 600 acre site and Mr. Harris came to Lincoln and approved. He was urged to use the family name for the park, but when he visited the site of his old home at 16th and K and stood at the graves of his parents in Wyuka, he decided on another—one which would name his parents in a broader sense and include all these with whom they had toiled in the wilderness—Pioneers.

George Harris, the father, came to Lincoln in the early seventies as land commissioner for the Burlington, and as part of his work brought thousands of people to the state. Later one of the sons, George B. Harris, became president of the Burlington. John F. Harris went to New York and became a successful financier. It was Mr. Harris’ wish not to drive nature from the rolling stretch of prairie presented to Lincoln, only to help her turn her most hospitable face to the city. One of the hills forms a natural amphitheater from which many programs and services have been heard. Lakes beautify the rolling surface of the park. Herds of buffalo and elk are a reminder of the early days. Near the east entrance stands a buffalo in bronze, also given by Mr. Harris, and made in Paris by the famous sculptor, George Gaudet.

No. 33—Smoke Signal, Pioneers Park

The east entrance of Pioneers is guarded by a bronze buffalo, symbol of the prairie when creatures of the plains drifted over her face scarcely aware of the existence of human beings. Their cries, their calls, were for themselves and the seasons. Yet they were not entirely alone. In and out of their orbit moved the Indian, as drifting as were the birds and the beasts. One day he might spread his camp in a valley, the smoke of his campfire lifting to the heavens. In a month, perhaps, he was beyond the horizon. The grasses rose slowly again and possession of the earth came back to the buffalo and the deer, the coyotes and the meadow larks.

Then came the white man. An early Lancaster county settler, John S. Gregory, wrote: “I reached the present site of Lincoln toward evening of a warm day in September (1862). No one lived there, or had ever lived there previous to that date. Herds of beautiful antelope gamboled over its surface during the day and coyotes and wolves held possession during the night.... About a mile west on Middle creek the smoke was rising from a camp of Otoe Indians, and down in the bend of Oak creek, where West Lincoln now stands, was a camp of about 100 Pawnee wigwams. I rode over, and that night slept upon my blanket by the side of one of them.”

The placing of “The Smoke Signal” (by Ellis Burman) in Pioneers was a suitable gesture. Its unveiling and dedication in 1935 was a picturesque, even dramatic, occasion. More than 100 Indians attended the ceremony. Chiefs of four Indian tribes which had roamed Nebraska sat their horses thruout the dedication, grouped at the top of the rugged hill which faces the west and the setting sun.

No. 34—Zoo in Antelope Park

Antelope park rambles loose-jointedly from the old federal treasury columns at 24th and O south to Sheridan boulevard. It can be and is many things to many people. Here families spread their fried chicken for a blue canopied feast, here the children point their toes to the sky as they pump up swings, here the band begins to play—evening and Sunday concerts. Here the young people dance the evening hours away, the summer Indians brandish their tennis rackets, the flower lovers stroll and gaze at elaborately laid out beds of flowers.

Or, calling all ages, there is the zoological building on south 27th, where the monkeys chatter and swing, the tigers shake their bars and little creatures of all kinds peer out from their cages. Central in the zoo is the scene above. Photographed thru the screen which surrounds it, it has the dreamlike quality of a Chinese painting. Some of the birds took to cover with the appearance of a camera. The scarlet ibis clings morosely to a branch and an African crane, with seedy headgear, is in picturesque tete-a-tete with another exotic bird in the foreground. The stork, to the left, legging its way as usual on the heights, is obliterated except for a beak and bit of curved wing.

The peace of this scene, with its pool, its rocks and flashes of bright color, is seldom disturbed. When the keeper circles the ledge symmetrically with dishes of bananas and grain the birds, big and small, float noiselessly down and begin pecking at their food in genteel manner.

No. 35—War Memorial, Antelope Park

Tucked here and there thruout Antelope park’s pleasant spaces—179 acres—are a number of statues and memorials, results of various impulses and circumstances. We have mentioned the pillars at the O street entrance. Roaming southward thru the park you will find others. One of these objects is the fountain given to the city by the late D. E. Thompson thirty or so years ago. It was placed in the center of 11th street a few blocks south of O. As Lincoln’s herd of automobiles grew to thundering proportions city officials realized that the fountain, very suitable in the days when ladies nodded to each other across it from phaetons and victorias moving on either side, must be transplanted. After a number of accidents, some of them truly tragic, the fountain was taken to the park. Neptune, on one side, had been permanently crippled and the water nymph on the other was doubtless aged in spirit.

In 1936 the Lincoln park department sponsored the putting up of a war memorial—a marble 23-foot shaft topped by a figure in ancient armour—spirit of war and victory. On four lower pedestals Revolutionary, Civil war, Spanish-American and World war soldiers look out, each leaning on his instrument of death. When Mr. Burman and the park department planned this statue they probably had no thought that it would be so quickly outmoded. No niche has been provided for a warrior of the present conflict.

Another figure in the park is The Pioneer Woman, donated by the Woman’s club and the park board. The trees along Memory garden and Memorial drive—north of Sheridan boulevard—were planted in memory of the Lincoln soldiers who fell in the first World war.

No. 36—Nebraska Capitol

Nebraska’s capitol, designed by Bertram Goodhue, is one of the beautiful buildings of the world. Twenty years ago, disputatious words were circling round its budding tower—derogatory, complimentary, acrimonious, laudatory. But the capitol rose silently thru this swarm of words and today stands superbly in completed perfection. Controversy has died away, and there are probably few Nebraskans who are not proud of the capitol’s majesty and timeless beauty.

Opening a forgotten drawer recently we came upon the dusty drawings of Mr. Goodhue’s rivals in the capitol competition of more than twenty years ago and found them yawn-provoking. Only the one chosen seemed alive, rising into the sky, even on its yellowed paper background, as tho from some inner compulsion.

The capitol has many moods. Sometimes she wraps a dark cloak somberly about her. The next time one turns to look, she shimmers in a cloak of light. The capitol is beautiful in all her moments—silhouetted against the blue, against storm or twilight, or against the limitless background of night.

No. 37—Front Entrance, Capitol

The inspiration for the capitol as a whole was Bertram Goodhue’s. He first ran an architect’s pencil around its noble contours, in a moment of exaltation flinging its tower toward to stars. But death drew the pencil from his hand while many markings were yet to be made.

It is said that for no other building since the middle ages has such a definite, complete and comprehensive symbolic scheme been worked out—giving complete unity to the finished edifice. To Mr. Goodhue’s immediate associates, of course, goes a great deal of the credit for the capitol. William Younkin has been the supervising architect. Among others who had a large part in the perfecting of the building are Lee Lawrie, the sculptor, Hildreth Meiere, responsible for its mosaics, and Hartley Burr Alexander, who planned the sculpture, wrote the inscriptions and worked out the art symbolism.

The late Dr. Alexander, native of Lincoln and professor of philosophy at the University of Nebraska until he went to Scripps college in 1927, was familiar to two generations of students in Lincoln. A mild retiring person with a furiously intellectual brow, he possessed great ability in the field of poetry and philosophy, writing perhaps twenty books on these subjects. The inscriptions of the building read unhurriedly along its vast corridors, beginning with the hymn of the Navajo, imprinted on the buffalo at the north entrance: “In Beauty I walk. With Beauty before me I walk. With Beauty behind me I walk, with Beauty above and about me I walk.”

No. 38—Capitol Panel, Signing the Magna Carta

The capitol is the story, in marble, of mankind. Its physical outlines suggest this—sprawling inarticulate humanity drawn up finally into strength and beauty. To amplify the story in words would mean great book piled on great book. For every mosaic, every panel and every rising pillar holds the tale of some great struggle or advance in the life of man. At last the story is brought down to Nebraska—its pioneers, its buffalo, its Indians, its corn and wheat. But before Nebraska comes the whole great panorama of mankind. The upward struggle toward a high ethical code, toward religion, is pictured in great movements or incidents of history.

The western group of nine panels seen from the promenade describes the development of law in the ancient world: Moses bringing the law to Mount Sinai; Deborah judging Israel; judgment of Solomon; Solon giving a new constitution to the Athenians, publishing of the law of the twelve tables in Rome; establishment of the tribunate of the people; Plato writing his dialog on the ideal republic; Orestes before the Areopagites; codification of Roman law under Justinian. On the south wall of the promenade are panels showing the magna carta, signing of the declaration of independence and writing of the constitution. The eastern group describes development of law in the modern and western world, panels including codification of Anglo-Saxon law, Milton defending free speech, signing of the Pilgrim compact, Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation, the Kansas-Nebraska bill and admission of Nebraska as a state.

At the upper corners of the tower eight sculptured figures represent spiritual leaders of civilization, including the prophet Ezekiel, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, St. John, St. Louis, Isaac Newton and Abraham Lincoln. Abstract virtues, Wisdom, Justice, Power, Mercy are represented as human figures at the north entrance.

No. 39—Foyer of State Capitol

Today we shall give you a few facts which include figures—the latter of which we have hitherto dealt out very stingily.

The lower part of the capitol is a square base, 437 feet each way, which conceals four inner courts formally landscaped. The tower reaches into the air 400 feet. The figure of the sower at the top is 20 feet tall and stands on a 12-foot pedestal—a shock of corn on a sheaf of wheat. The sower weighs about nine tons.

The four light colored pillars in the foyer are the largest single piece marble columns in this country. They weigh approximately sixteen tons each. The chandelier which hangs in the center of the building, is the largest bronze chandelier of its type in the world. Its bell part is a single piece of pure bronze, cast in New York City. The whole chandelier weighs 3,500 pounds. It is 112 feet from the floor to the ceiling from which the chandelier depends.

Gov. Samuel McKelvie broke ground for the new building April 15, 1922, with Marshal Joffre of France as guest of honor. Dedicatory exercises were held ten years later. The building cost $10,000,000 and is paid for.

Guides who tell many interesting facts about the capitol make daily trips thru the building, at 10:30, 2:00 and 3:30, excepting that on Sunday the 10:30 tour is omitted.

No. 40—First Presbyterian church, 17th and F.

In 1863 Elder Young founded the town of Lancaster—to become Lincoln four years later—on his own 80 acre tract, which cornered Luke Lavender’s farm at what is now 14th and O. The village was to extend from 14th to 7th and from O to Vine. As the far-sighted elder bent musingly over the white paper which represented the future town he saw a city strong in church life—and even predicted that it would some day be the capital of Nebraska. Another dream was of a female seminary—either to induce families with young ladies to come to the new town or to make prairie damsels into suitable wives and mothers for his churchly city. Hovering over the platted town his pencil finally came to rest at 9th and P as a site for the seminary.

Many of the lots into which his farm was ribboned he gave to county and school districts. Money from the others went into the seminary. That institution burned in 1867, but Elder Young’s dream of a city of churches was more enduring. Between 1866 and 1870 Congregational, Methodist, Presbyterian, Christian, Baptist and Catholic churches were organized and built. These were forerunners of present downtown churches. Lincoln now has about 80 places of worship.

The First Presbyterian church was organized April 4, 1869. Its first two buildings were supplanted in 1927 by the present beautiful structure, one of whose distinctions is having been planned by the late Ralph Adams Crams. Thus may it lay claim to special brotherhood with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and St. Thomas’ church of New York City.

No. 41—Burlington Shops at Havelock

On July 4, 1870, while Lincoln citizens were celebrating the nation’s birthday in shady groves, as was their wont, there came from the northeast a strange cavalcade. It was a string of flatcars, over which bowers of cottonwood branches had been arranged, pulled by a chortling little engine named The Wahoo, which name probably echoed the cries of the tugging engine rather exactly. Under the bowers sat travelers on improvised seats, chatting excitedly. It was the first passenger train to pull into, or almost into, Lincoln. The Burlington and Missouri rails had been laid to within a mile of the town and the company celebrated by offering a free round trip from Plattsmouth to Lincoln, which was made at the exhilarating speed of 15 or 20 miles an hour.