I was a young business man in Michigan in 1871, about which time many civil war veterans were moving from Michigan and other states to Kansas and Nebraska, where they could secure free homesteads. I received circulars advertising Juniata. They called it a village but at that time there were only four houses, all occupied by agents of the Burlington railroad who had been employed to preÎmpt a section of land for the purpose of locating a townsite. In October, 1871, I started for Juniata, passing through Chicago at the time of the great fire. With a comrade I crossed the Missouri river at Plattsmouth on a flatboat. The Burlington was running mixed trains as far west as School Creek, now Sutton. We rode to that point, then started to walk to Juniata, arriving at Harvard in the evening. Harvard also had four houses placed for the same purpose as those in Juniata. Frank M. Davis, who was elected commissioner of public lands and buildings in 1876, lived in one house with his family; the other three were supposed to be occupied by bachelors. We arranged with Mr. Davis for a bed in an upper room of one of the vacant houses. We were tenderfeet from the East and therefore rather suspicious of the surroundings, there being no lock on the lower door. To avoid being surprised we piled everything we could find against the door. About midnight we were awakened by a terrible noise; our fortifications had fallen and we heard the tramp of feet below. Some of the preÎmptors had been out on section 37 for wood and the lower room was where they kept the horse feed. The next morning we paid our lodging and resumed the journey west. Twelve miles from Harvard we found four more houses placed by the Burlington. The village was called Inland and was on the east line of Adams county but has since been moved east into Clay county. Just before reaching Inland we met a man coming from the west with a load of buffalo meat and at Inland we found C. S. Jaynes, one of the preÎmptors, sitting outside his shanty cutting up some of the meat. It was twelve miles farther to Juniata, the railroad grade being our guide. The section where Hastings now stands was on the line but there was no town, not a tree or living thing in sight, just burnt prairie. I did not think when we passed over that black and desolate section that a city like Hastings would be builded there. The buffalo and the antelope had gone in search of greener pastures; even the wolf and the coyote were unable to live there at that time. [Illustration: OREGON TRAIL MONUMENT ON NEBRASKA-WYOMING STATE LINE Erected by the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution of Nebraska and Wyoming. Dedicated April 4, 1913. Cost $200] [Illustration: MONUMENT ON THE OREGON TRAIL Seven miles south of Hastings. Erected by Niobrara Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution at a cost of $100]