Traveling over this trail were men of affairs, alert men who had noted the rich grasses and wide ranges that bordered the route, and marked it down as the cattle raiser's and ranchman's future paradise. Then came the great range herds of the Ogallalla Cattle Company, Swan Brothers, Bosler Brothers, the Bay State and other large cow outfits, followed by the hard-riding cowboy and the chuck wagon. These gave names to prominent landmarks. A unique elevation in the eastern part of the county they named Box Butte. Butte means hill or elevation less than a mountain, Box because it was roughly square or box-shaped. Hence the surrounding plains were designated in cowman's parlance "the Box Butte country," and as such it was known far and wide. Later, in 1886 and 1887, a swarm of homeseekers swept in from the East, took up the land, and began to build houses of sod and to break up the virgin soil. The cowman saw that he was doomed, and so rounded up his herds of longhorns and drove on westward into Wyoming and Montana. These new settlers soon realized that they needed a unit of government to meet the requirements of a more refined civilization. They were drawn together by a common need, and rode over dim trails circulating petitions calling for an organic convention. They met and provided for the formation of a new county, to be known as "Box Butte" county. This name was officially adopted, and is directly traceable to the discovery of gold in the Black Hills. The lure of gold led the hardy miner and adventurer across its fertile plains, opened the way for the cattleman who named the landmark from which the county takes its name, and the sturdy settler who followed in his wake adopted the name and wrote it in the archives of the state and nation. [Illustration: UNVEILING OF MONUMENT AT KEARNEY, NEBRASKA, IN COMMEMORATION OF THE OREGON TRAIL Left to right: Mrs. Ashton C. Shallenberger, Governor Shallenberger, Mrs. Oreal S. Ward, State Regent Nebraska Society, Daughters of the American Revolution; Mrs. Andrew K. Gault, Vice-President General, National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution; Mrs. Charles O. Norton, Regent Ft. Kearney Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution; John W. Patterson, Mayor of Kearney; John Lee Webster, President Nebraska State Historical Society; Rev. R. P. Hammons, E. B. Finch, assisting with the flag rope] A BROKEN AXLE BY SAMUEL C. BASSETT In 1860, Edward Oliver, Sr., his wife and seven children, converts to the Mormon faith, left their home in England for Salt Lake City, Utah. At Florence, Nebraska, on the Missouri river a few miles above the city of Omaha, they purchased a traveling outfit for emigrants, which consisted of two yoke of oxen, a prairie-schooner wagon, and two cows; and with numerous other families having the same destination took the overland Mormon trail up the valley of the Platte on the north side of the river.