22 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN October 2025 PAST The Start of Great Plains Ranching BOB HOUGH | CONTRIBUTING WRITER With the end of the Civil War in 1865, restless war veterans and other citizens looked west for new land and new opportunities. By this time, the Midwest was well established as an agriculture powerhouse, and the far west of the Oregon Territory and California were populated with settlers. Therefore, the opportunities lay in the Great Plains, which people were coming to realize was far from the “Great American Desert,” as it was first described. The end of the Civil War also brought a shift in political power to the West. Prior to the war, Virginia held sway as the major political power, providing the country with six presidents – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Zachary Taylor and John Tyler – in what became known as the Virginia Dynasty. However, from the end of the war until the turn of the century (1865 to 1900), the center of power shifted to west of the Allegheny Mountains and Ohio in particular. During this period, five Ohioans would hold the highest office, including Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley. In their 1919 book American History, authors Arthur Perry, Jr., and Gertrude Price observed: “And these men [post-war presidents] came neither from the old North nor from the old South, but from the newer West. All were born in Ohio, one of the states carved out of the great Northwest Territory [defined by the United State’s initial western border at the Mississippi River] that was organized at the close of the Revolution. How that region was settled and how it furnished presidents is all part of a wonderful story of progress.” The initial stocking of states like Nebraska, as well as the other western states, started in the early 1860s. This was before rich investors invaded the cattle country of the Plains, and these initial ranches were built based on capital from hard work and determination. In western Nebraska, Edward and John Creighton are generally credited with being the first to stock a ranch in the state. The Creightons acquired much of their capital by taking on the mammoth task of building the 1,100 miles of telegraph line needed to connect eastern and western lines already in place. On Oct. 24, 1861, the telegraph line reached Fort Bridger in Utah, where the California telegraph line terminated. Thus, the job of connecting east and west was completed, and the Creightons immediately invested their funds into ranching and freighting. This was in spite of the risk of running cattle in the 1860s – Indian raids were still a major problem, and the infrastructure for getting cattle to market was not yet in place. However, by the 1870s, the Plains started to be stocked at a more rapid pace. By this time in Nebraska, the risk of Indian raids had largely subsided and the trail drives from Texas were in full swing. In 1869, the first railroad passing through the West A portion of the stone corral that was built by Tom Webster, the original owner of what is now the Maddux Ranch near Imperial.
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