by Angela DeBolt
Long Pine Palace June 19, 2021
HISTORICAL MARKER
A year or so ago, we at the Long Pine Heritage Society raised funds and installed a Nebraska State Historical Marker on Main Street.
It reads: “Long Pine: A Railroad Town.” In 160 words or less it details Long Pine’s railroad history. Today I want to go into it a bit further.
Long Pine, historically, served as a landmark for travelers. The Lakota called the stream “Wazihonska Wakpala,” meaning “Long Pine Creek.” There was a very tall pine tree that stood above the canyon here, marking fresh water and game. It could be seen for miles. The story is that it was cut down to become the flagpole at Fort Hartsuff.
But even after the landmark was gone, travelers still came through.
After the government built Fort Niobrara near Valentine, Long Pine was a twice per week stage stop between Neligh and the fort. The following year the Berry Brothers Stage Line made Long Pine their headquarters.
Many traveled through, but some stayed. Early on, a man by the name of Smith and his family homesteaded here. His first name escapes my research, but he was known as “Dirty” Smith, reportedly due to his appearance. The Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad paid “Dirty” Smith to hold the location for them, so he homesteaded the land where the Long Pine’s railyard would be. In the fall of 1881 the railroad arrived.
First they built a 3-stall roundhouse to service the equipment, and after looking it over decided to bridge Pine Creek at a location one mile south of town. The canyon was much narrower there. They constructed a 280-foot trestle near what we know now as Seven Springs.
This bridge had wood siding and lots of wooden cross trusses, so barrels of water lined both sides of the bridge in case of fire. When the railroad built further west they curved back up from the bridge to the original line, leaving kind of a horseshoe bend in the tracks.
A few years later, in 1883, the Railroad industry set standardized time zones for the first time, and the boundary line between Central and Mountain zones went right through Long Pine. Long Pine also served as the Division Point between Norfolk and Chadron on what the railroad called their “Cowboy Line.”
To the east from Long Pine the Nebraska Division fired their steam engines with coal and ran on Central Time. To the west, the Black Hills Division ran on Mountain Time with oil-burning steam engines.
In 1884 the Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad sold to the Chicago & North Western Transportation Co. (CN&W) who officially took over in 1903. The following year they began the work of bridging Pine Creek over the larger canyon due west of the railyard, in line with the westward rails on the other side. They encountered a few obstacles.
First, an ice house stood in the way. Several hundred tons of Minnechaduza Creek ice from Valentine had to be given away before they could tear it down and build a new one in a better location. The new one was soon filled again, with CN&W purchasing 800 to 900 tons of ice—the equivalent of 50 railcar loads.
Next, a coal pile with 2,000 tons of coal stood where the new tracks would go. The railroad didn’t have the right equipment so the CN&W had to buy an old steam shovel and ship it in from Iowa. After all that, it took the steam shovel only a few days to move the entire pile.
An Austrian grading crew was brought in and began work. It was discovered that the 25-horsepower steam engine the railroad had wasn’t big enough to pull the grading machine, and a bigger engine was brought in for the job. At the same time this was happening, the telegraph line from Long Pine to Merriman was being rebuilt. Hundreds of telegraph poles were unloaded here for the 118-mile project.
Then at the end of August, 1905, a fire broke out in a pile of old railroad ties at one end of the rail yard. The fire was directly under the telegraph line and melted the wires, stopping all communication with the east for a while. Railroad workers couldn’t reach the fire with their hoses from the roundhouse so they borrowed several links of hose from the city. The hoses from the city weren’t made for high pressure and some burst.
There was a danger that the fire would spread to the roundhouse, coal chutes and coal pile. When a large stockpile of bridge timbers was threatened, one of the big Austrians carried them to safety by hand. The fire was finally contained early the next morning. It was thought that a spark from a passing train started the fire.
Despite all of the setbacks and obstacles, the bridge was completed. Building it had cut an entire 1 mile and 30 feet off of the mileage. It was officially opened December 21, 1905 by the westbound passenger train.
As for the old bridge, the city thought they had bought it from the railroad to use in another spot. City officials even went to Chicago to seal the deal, but the CN&W ultimately decided to dismantle it and use it down the line. The city did end up buying the land the railroad owned on the old loop in 1959. Part of the old right-of-way is now the road to Seven Springs.
Long Pine’s rail yard once had a large roundhouse, a turntable, a 2-spouted water tower, an oil storage tank, and a coal chute–all for steam Engines. The coal chute was removed in 1935 after it became obsolete. Let’s take a look at how the other railroad buildings changed with the times.
The Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad built a 3-stall roundhouse in 1881 to service their steam engines and equipment. Soon after taking over, the CN&W added six more stalls to the Roundhouse. In 1918 the three eastern stalls caught fire and were destroyed. The fire also badly damaged the steam engines within. After the fire the railroad rebuilt, expanding the roundhouse to 12 stalls. On the west side of the Roundhouse there was a machine shop, a boiler room and a small office.
In 1926, when the line’s largest steam engine, the 282 Mikado, arrived, they had to lengthen three of the stalls by 33 1/2 feet to accommodate the “Mikes.” Already over 60-feet long, these stalls would be close to the length of a football field. By 1941, the roundhouse had scaled back to six stalls. As the development and use of diesel engines grew, the building became obsolete. It was demolished in 1958.
Why do we call it a Roundhouse? Because it is built in a semicircle around a turntable. The engine would be shuttled onto the turntable, which would turn until pointed at the correct stall, and the engine would then be pushed into the stall for storage or maintenance.
The turntable began as 60-foot span in 1881. A few years after they took over, the CN&W increased it to a 70-foot span. In 1926 They had to increase the span even more to a 95 foot span because of the new bigger steam engines, the "Mikes". The workings of the turntable have since been either dug up or buried, but the cement outline of a cirle still marks the spot.
A new Nebraska State Historical Marker to commemorate Long Pine’s Railroad History was installed a year ago on Main Street and dedicated on Saturday, June 19th during Long Pine Day. A great display of the railyards can be found at the Long Pine Heritage House Museum, open 1:00-4:00 p.m. every Friday and Saturday until Labor Day.
The railroad’s stockyards were originally located on the loop to the old bridge. They handled a lot of cattle, but every fall they experienced a “Stock Rush” as cattle were shipped and sold to eastern markets. In 1900 alone, 50,000 head cattle were branded and fed in Long Pine. After the new bridge cut off that loop, they were replaced by new larger stockyards west of the creek along the new rails. By 1940 the stockyards in that location had been discontinued and a smaller stockyard south of the tracks and just east of Main Street served until business ceased. It was removed in 1972.
The first depot burned down in 1888. Then they built a depot on the end of the railroad’s hotel and eating house. The current depot, now home to the City of Long Pine’s offices, was originally a baggage and express building, then a mechanical department, and finally a freight agent’s office before becoming Long Pine’s depot in 1965.
The railroad brought a much broader world to Long Pine. Long Pine’s population peaked in 1920 at 1,200 people. At one time five passenger trains per day stopped here; for some passengers Long Pine was their destination. Many came to visit Hidden Paradise Amusement Park, which began in 1910. Some tourists would walk down the canyon road from the depot and some rode in Clem Wright’s Model T taxi, down and back.
Long Pine was also one of the stops on a national Chautauqua tour in the late 1800s. People from all over the US flocked to these shows for both entertainment and enlightenment, and many found Long Pine’s scenic beauty a big draw.
It was easy to get here by railroad, and many did. At these gatherings, tents were lined up in rows as many people camped to get the full group experience. Speakers, politicians, showmen and preachers regularly appeared on “stage.” In Long Pine at one Chautauqua, a group of Lakota Sioux sang in Lakota with translation for the audience. Into the 1920s local Chautauqua organizations hosted these gatherings at Long Pine. Other campers, nature enthusiasts, fishermen—everyone loved the picturesque setting here. And still do. Long Pine still has tourism and probably always will simply because of its locale, but the mode of transportation is different today and there is less to do, which, to some, is exactly the point of coming here.
Passenger trains not only benefited tourists coming in, they also enabled local people to easily visit the next town, the next state and beyond. People could visit loved ones, attend weddings and funerals, see a medical specialist in a city, or go see the ocean…the possibilities abounded. Over the years the number of passengers declined until the service was suspended. The last passenger train came through Long Pine in 1958.
Farmers, ranchers and others utilized the freight trains that ran through Long Pine. The railroad provided them ready access to a larger market to sell hay, cattle, grain, potatoes, milk, eggs and cream. When farmers sent off cream in large cans the same cans were returned, empty. Local car dealers could ship in automobiles to sell. Grain elevators could fill grain cars with corn and send it off to a better market than they could otherwise reach. But running even just freight trains on the line became unprofitable. The last freight train passed through Long Pine in 1992.
The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy purchased the abandoned railroad right-of-way in 1993 and donated it to Nebraska Game & Parks Commission. This is how the Cowboy Line became the Cowboy Trail, a hiking-biking trail that runs from Norfolk to Chadron.
The railroad didn’t create the changing economy, it responded to it. Yet its loss had a very measurable economic impact on the area. It has affected farmers, ranchers, store owners, restaurant owners and on down the line. Population gravitated toward cities and away from rural areas. Long Pine’s population, once 1,200, is now about 300. Yet Long Pine’s railroad has also had a personal impact on a lot of people, too. Whether a grandparent, parent or uncle worked for the railroad, or ran a boarding house for railroad crews, or worked in a café that served passengers, or raised cattle to ship by rail, it shaped people’s history. The railroad shaped Long Pine, for better and for worse. It’s definitely worthwhile to commemorate this aspect of Long Pine’s heritage.
This year The Long Pine Heritage Society is moving beyond the State Historical Marker, down the Cowboy Trail east of Main Street where we will soon be putting up informative signs that detail the railyard’s history, including photos of the roundhouse and turntable, and of the giant 282 Mikado steam engines (the “Mikes”).
A panoramic view of Long Pine in 1920 will be set on Main Street near the Historical Marker. This project is generously being funded by the Brown County Foundation, the Brown County Visitor’s Committee and others. We sincerely thank them.
We urge you to visit the Heritage House Museum. The museum has something for everybody: a Long Pine railroad diorama room, a Brown County Fossil display, and everything from Coca-Cola and quilts to barbed wire and Kid Wade.
The Heritage House Museum is open 1:00-4:00 p.m. every Friday and Saturday until Labor Day.
A new Nebraska State Historical Marker to commemorate Long Pine’s Railroad History was installed a year ago on Main Street and dedicated on Saturday, June 19th during Long Pine Day.
A great display of the railyards can be found at the Long Pine Heritage House Museum, open 1:00-4:00 p.m. every Friday and Saturday until Labor Day.