The Future Capital of the U.S.A. | Post 26 | Nebraska
Here, along the Platte River’s eastern Nebraska stretch, I have come across “quite probably the future capital of the U.S.A.,” and, if not, quite probably the oldest continuously operated tavern west of the Mississippi.
The capital prognosticator is eccentric 19th-century entrepreneur and traveler George Francis Train, who was the inspiration for Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg of Around the World in Eighty Days. The bar is Glur’s Tavern, a pit stop for legendary showman “Buffalo Bill” Cody. And the town is Columbus, native city of Andrew Higgins, maker of the Higgins Boats, the platoon landing crafts that won World War II.
That such a trove of trivia should congregate in Columbus, Nebraska, speaks to two truths: One, mentioned in other posts, is that Street View travel reliably yields great stories in unlikely places. Second, Columbus is a product of the transcontinental railroad.
Today a city of 22,000 residents, Columbus boasted just 16 upon official incorporation in 1858. But during the 1860s — as the Civil War raged — Congress approved financing for three companies to construct 1,912 miles of railroad line between the Pacific Coast and the eastern U.S. railroad network, which then only reached the Missouri River at Omaha and Council Bluffs, Iowa.
The Union Pacific Rail Road was charged with the majority of the track, from Council Bluffs to Promontory Summit, Utah, and the route would closely follow the Platte, a fluvial guideway for nearly all major travel & communications development in American history: Native American trails; fur-trading and pioneer routes like the Oregon Trail; the Pony Express; the transcontinental telegraph; the transcontinental railroad; the transcontinental Lincoln Highway; and Interstate 80.
Columbus and entrepreneurial types like George Train were positioned to profit. The railroad and growing agricultural output rendered Columbus a regional trade center by the 1870s. Train, a Bostonian involved with the Union Pacific, bought plots and established a hotel in Columbus, speculating that “a magnificent highway of cities” could be built transcontinentally westward. Columbus’s location near the geographical center of the U.S. prompted his marketing of the town as the nation’s “future capital”.
(It was 1870 when Train circumnavigated the globe in 80 days — with a two-month break in France — and when journalist Nellie Bly did it in 72 days in 1890, Train promptly took off to reclaim the record with a 67-day trip, following up with a 60-day circuit in 1892.)
Columbus’s environs reflect its pedigree. Along the Omaha-to-Columbus roads, I — and I’m sure the Google Street View car driver — enjoyed a drive hued by golden sunset, farming, and trains.
In Columbus, I headed straight to Glur’s Tavern. The establishment retains its original 1876 oak floors and tables, along with an 1880s German clock which has never been moved. In Columbus’s late 19th-century heyday, Buffalo Bill would come to town to rehearse ahead of his “Wild West” shows in Omaha. Once, the story goes, he ordered a round of drinks for all at Glur’s (then Bucher’s Saloon). And paid with a $1000 bill.
Ground covered since last post:
- Start: Red Oak, Iowa
- Emerson, Iowa
- Pacific Junction, Iowa
- Bellevue, Nebr.
- Omaha, Nebr.
- Waterloo, Nebr.
- Fremont, Nebr.
- End: Columbus, Nebr.
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Beef and Sand | Post 27 | Nebraska
