James McCreath Recalls His Arrival at the site of North Bend Fifty Years Ago. From the North Bend Eagle 16 April 1916
April 1, 1916 marks an important anniversary in the lives of Mr and Mrs James McCreath of this city. On that date, fifty years ago, they, in company with Mr and Mrs John Graham and Wm. McPherson, halted their weary horses in front of the Overland stage station in the east part of what is now North Bend. They had come to the end of their journey. After a long month spent in a covered wagon during which time they had laboriously travelled from Illinois, across the state of Iowa and thence into Nebraska, they had at last reached their destination.
“And a veritable Eden it looked to me”, said Mr McCreath in recalling these memorable first impressions. “A light snow had fallen and the prairies stretched out smooth and level as a floor. We did not know then that for nearly seven years those same prairies would hardly give us enough to eat. Why? Grasshoppers. You don’t know anything about them. We found out. There was no drainage to the land, no ditches, no roads, and when the rain fell it lay on the land until it soaked in.
But to return to that first spring fifty years ago. We rented land of Mathew Cottrell and began farming. The land was the present town site of North Bend so that we can truthfully lay claim to being the patriarchs of the town. There were other people here, it was true, the Youngs, the Millars, the Smiths, the Slouses, and the Grahams were to the west of us and the Dodges and some others to the east of us, all homesteading close to the Military Road.
We lived that summer, all three families of us, for Wm Mcpherson was married the following August at the Overland Stage house. Here was where passengers were cared for and stage horses changed on the stage route from Omaha to Denver. That Spring, as was mentioned in the Eagle, a few weeks ago, the Union Pacific was built as far as North Bend and shortly after that the route was abandoned, although the overland stage house was a welcome haven for immigrants for several years longer. It was then kept by Mr and Mrs Ayers. Mrs Ayers was a sister of Milton May and Mr May was making his home with them at that time and is the only man now living who was in what is now the corporated limits of North Bend when we came here.
After the Union Pacific came through, evidence of a town began to spring up on the south side of the track and a hotel was started over there that summer. In the fall, as soon as we had cleared our crop off the land, Smith Brothers of Fremont began the erection of a store building where the Gerke and Williams store now stands, and then as now it was known as the Corner Store.
We homesteaded three miles north of the present town and I think I am safe in saying that we were the first settlers to venture away from the Military Road. There was no sign of a road north of town so unbroken was the prairie that when we took a trip out to our homesteads we had to set stakes in order to find our way back. However, we survived the hardships of those years and lived to see our faith in Dodge county land more than justified. And looking back now from a distance of fifty years my wife and I are yet glad of that morning of April 1, 1866, which brought us into North Bend, Nebraska.