Hall County NEGenWeb
Reminiscences & Narratives of Pioneers
OTHER EARLY RECOLLECTIONS

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Transcribed from
the ©1920 "History of Hall County," by Buechler, Barr, and Stough

"Once in a while there used to be something pretty rough pulled off. A policeman shot a fellow one day where the American restaurant now stands.

"Gus Koehler ran a saloon on the site where the Schuff or American restaurant is now, until after the old O. K. store was moved away and until he got the brick Koehler hotel built on the present corner. Such characters as the principals of the Oliver tragedy up west used to wander through occasionally. Doc. Middleton, the famous horse thief from up Custer way, who never stole just a horse or two, but generally a carload or two, used to come in. I remember that last time I saw him was when he had his wife in the Sisters Hospital." Mr. Anderson remarks that he was present when the Soldier' Home building was dedicated, and the young community and county thought it was getting to be some place to have a wonderful building as that put up here. He adds that every old buggy and plug in the county and about every person within range was here that day. In those early days the Union Pacific round house stood where the city water works is now located on Pine and Fourth streets. In the early 'seventies, Mr. Anderson says, one morning, he counted fourteen antelope feeding between present Fifthe street and the railroad tracks. "You could get up on a nice still morning, like this time especially, and hear the prairie chickens in a continual roar, and see roosters strutting around and it was no trouble at all to kill great numbers of prairie chickens. He says that while he was stationed out around Fort Kearny in the 'sixties, around Kearny and the present Lexington and over toward the B. and B. Divide you could ride on horseback and see buffalo just as far as the eye could see, looked just like an ocean, continual movements as far as the eye could see.