18 Sep 2022 - Knight Museum, Schwandt Family Research, Steam Locomotive, Veteran's Cemetery & Old Airbase

 18 Sep

Busy day here.  We stopped by the Box Butte County Courthouse here in Alliance and took a couple pictures.  Back in the day there was a big feud as to where the county seat would be located, so much so that a group tried to skew the vote.  The original courthouse, located in Hemingford NE, north of here,  was jacked up and physically moved by train from Hemingford to Alliance.  In the movie it looked like a wooden structure.  This one here is stone and would weight hundreds of tons, so they did not move this one, but it is a great story and this is a great looking courthouse!  Plus there is a nice Veteran's memorial on the property.

From the courthouse we headed to the Sallows Military Museum, which according to their web site was supposed to be open today from 1300-1700 hrs.  We got there and it was locked up tightly.

So plan B, we moved on to the Alliance Knight Museum and Sandhill Center.  This is the main history museum in Alliance.  We found out that places like the newspaper use this for off-site storage, so this is the repository for local historical items. 

This museum was open, again, no admission charge, so we entered and were greeted by a nice young lady by the name of Delaney Mayer.  She queued up an introductory movie that explained a lot about the history of Alliance.   To summarize, the museum covers
- the history of the local geology - the western Nebraska "sandhills"
    They are large sand dunes held in place by a mix of stabilizing grasses, and they cover also one fourth of Nebraska.  They say that the Sandhills remain as one of America's last frontiers. 
- Native Americans
- Alliance through the years including the wild west

The various Alliance historical periods were focused on a specific person, such as the town doctor, a person from the railroad, a local rancher, etc.  Some pictures:

Doreen studying the Sandhills

Early Alliance homestead

Various Native American displays

Local wildlife

Beautiful Native American craft

Alliance and the railroad

Telegraph equipment from the railroad

Early refrigerator made by General Electric and other household equipment

Old baseball equipment and <supposedly> the Guinness Book of World Records longest baseball game at 30 hrs 5 min and 27 sec at the Bower-Shankland Field here in Alliance on 2-3 Sep 2006

Local photographer and her equipment

Local doctor and his equipment

A local rancher

In the back of the museum they have tables with newspapers, books and other items free for the taking.  The newspapers were arranged by decade starting with the 1920's.  This interested us as explained previously, Doreen's grandfather worked for the local newspaper here back in the mid-20's.  So we started looking through the newspapers but really did not come up with anything.  

So that about wrapped up the museum.  We headed for the door but stopped at the gift shop as Doreen was looking for an Alliance t-shirt.  We also wanted to talk with Delaney some more about Doreen's grandfather and if they possibly had any other newspapers from that era.  She said they likely did not, but asked if we had ever searched www.newspapers.com ?  It is a subscription service and as a museum they subscribe.  So she plugged in the "Schwandt" name and Alliance NE and got all kinds of results!!  Score!

To summarize, she found articles from 10 Apr 1923 reference her grandparents moving from Denver CO to Alliance all the way to 28 Jan 1926 when they moved from Alliance to Spencer IA!  There were many more articles and she said she would work on this as she had time and email them to us!

One of the articles actually listed their home address here in Alliance, so when we left the museum we drove by their house and took a picture!

That was simply awesome!  After driving around and finding the house, we drove a bit north and found the steam locomotive at the baseball fields.  

This is Burlington (Iowa!) Locomotive 719.  The mid-1880's brought a huge cattle-raising operation to the Sandhills area.  The railroad  moved through in the 1887-1888 timeframe, and ranching became more profitable.  This locomotive was built in Havelock NE about 1903 and was used for over a half a century. It was gifted to the City of Alliance by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Company in April 1962.  It weighs in at 86 tons!

I think we mentioned before how huge the railroad industry is here.  They have a huge diesel engine repair facility among others. We took a few more pictures on the way back to the campground this afternoon:

Extra railroad equipment

Since the military museum was closed today we will catch it in a couple days.  So we had a bit of extra time, we headed out to the Nebraska Veteran's Cemetery and the site near the airport of the old Alliance Army Air Base which was declared surplus in December 1945. Part of the old Army field was transferred to Alliance for use as an airport. .  I'm sure we will learn more about that at the military museum, but at least we can have a look at the old ground.

In 2008, the City of Alliance donated twenty acres of the airfield to the Nebraska Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Local funds were raised and combined with appropriated state funds , and the request for a State Veterans Cemetery was approved. The US Department of Veterans Affairs provided the remaining amount of funds to construct and equip the cemetery.

There are other military cemeteries in Nebraska, but this is the first State Veterans Cemetery. Construction was started in 2008 and it was dedicated and presented to the public on August 13, 2010. The first interment was held January 21, 2011.

Their Veteran's Cemetery 

This is a beautiful facility and it was a honor to drive through and admire it.  Doreen and I have an approved plot in the Iowa Veteran's Cemetery near Van Meter IA.  "Plot" as in singular!  Husbands and wives are buried in the same plot, one on top of the other.  Who ever dies first is on the bottom!!

A bit south of the cemetery is the airport, and there is evidence of the old Army airfield.  It is visible from Google Maps and some of the old foundations are visible.  The buildings that used to be here were primarily barracks, but they were sold off after the base closed.  Ironically, there is one of those barracks buildings at our campground!  The owner gave me a tour today!

That is it for tonight.  Tomorrow we plan to drive to Scotts Bluff NE and visit the National Monument, and that area.  Then we will drive to Chimney Rock and have a look at the museum and the landscape there.