Although most painfully familiar to every early settler, no pioneer story is complete without the grasshoppers. They came in herds and droves and ate every green thing. For days great clouds of them passed over. The next year they hatched out in great numbers and flew away without hurting anything. Mr. Badger had a nice young orchard that he had planted and tended. The grasshoppers ate the leaves off the trees and as it was early in August they leaved out again and were frozen so they died. Snakes feasted on the hoppers. Since seeing a garter snake at that time just as full of grasshoppers as it could possibly be, Lewis Badger has never killed a snake or permitted one to be killed on his farm. He declared that anything that could make away with so many grasshoppers should be allowed to live. Many people asked for and received the so-called "aid for grasshopper sufferers." In this section of the country it seemed absolutely unnecessary as there had been harvested a good crop of wheat, previous to the coming of the hoppers. In 1871 the railroad was built through the county. That season Lewis Badger sold watermelons, that he had raised, to the construction gang at work on the road. The town of Fairmont was started the same year. In those days the settlers would walk to town. It was nothing unusual for Mr. and Mrs. Badger and Lewis to walk to Fairmont, a distance of six miles. When the Badger family settled on their claim, they planted a row of cottonwood trees around it. These trees have made a wonderful growth. In 1911 part of them were sawed into lumber. There are two especially large cottonwood trees on the farm. One measures twenty-six feet in circumference at the base and nineteen feet around five feet above the ground and runs up forty feet before it begins to branch out. The other is thirty-three feet around the base but branches into three trees four feet above the ground. Mrs. H. L. Badger was a witness of the first wedding in the county, that of Wm. Whitaker and Sabra Brumsey, which took place June 28, 1871. The ceremony was performed by the first county judge, Wm. H. Blaine, who stayed all night at the Badger home and attended the wedding the next day. Mrs. H. L. Badger died January 11, 1894, and Mr. Badger July 21, 1905. The son Lewis and family still own and farm the old homestead. FIRST WHITE SETTLER IN FILLMORE COUNTY The first settlement in Fillmore county, Nebraska, was made in 1866 by Nimrod J. Dixon, a native of Pennsylvania. He was married to Lydia Gilmore, who had previously filed on a homestead adjoining his. Mr. and Mrs. Dixon continued to reside on their homestead until they moved to Fairmont, Nebraska, where they are now living, having lived on the farm forty years.