The Road South Out of Town

The Road South Out of Town

“There are highways born, and old roads die-

                                                          Can you read what once they said,
                                              From the wayward ditch and the sunflower clump,
                                                         And the needs of folk long died.”

                                                  from York County, Nebraska And Its People, 1921

 

Today South Lincoln Avenue serves as the front door to the City of York. However, that hasn’t always been the case. A combination of the reconciling of public surveys, building decisions and changes in modes of transportation led to the gentle curve which today carries automobile traffic south out of town.

In 1869 the Nebraska Legislature enacted law stating “that section lines be and are hereby declared to be public roads”. The section lines referred to are those laid out by the Public Lands Survey System (PLSS). The Survey divided up the country from Pennsylvania westward into 640 acre sections of land in preparation for settlement. The Nebraska law was a recognition of already existing Federal law that provided for a right-of way to an individual’s land. The right-of-way was set at 66 feet, the length of a surveying unit called a chain.

In October of that same year the City of York was platted. The primary street through the city, Lincoln Avenue, didn’t matchup with the already existing land survey. The street was instead laid out to allow for the Courthouse to be sited in the center of the new city. People would eventually travel to the city by train. Those coming from nearby farms followed the section lines using horse drawn vehicles. For horse drawn traffic, speed was not an issue and 90 degree turns were not an inconvenience.

Other than farmsteads the first major building project on the southern edge of the city was the construction of the Kansas City and Omaha Railroad which ran north and south. The railroad bought a strip of land across the homestead of the Butterfield family. In 1887 Elbert and Margaret Butterfield sold a hundred foot wide strip of land which when it became the railroad right-of-way complicated the extension of Division Avenue, a section line, southward out of town. The public right of way then became the present S. Grant Avenue, which is a quarter section line. That fact comes into play later in this story.

In March of 1909, when Elbert Butterfield was 63 years old, he and his wife sold their farm, moved into town and Elbert took up work as a carpenter. The farm was sold to the International Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) who used it as a home for aged members of their organization, their spouses and widows. The institution also provide a home for the orphans and half orphans of members. The IOOF “determined to build a fire-proof building of strictly modern construction and meeting every sanitary requirement known to the building profession.”

The original IOOF Home at York (circa 1910) located in what was probably the former home of Elbert and Margaret Butterfield.

In Albert Watkins’ 1913 History of Nebraska the President of the IOOF’s Home Building Board, George Loomis provided a detailed description of the building. He even went so far as to describe the main staircase in great detail.

                          “The main stairway to the second floor leads up from the corridor directly in
                           front of the main entrance, to a landing, then by left turn to another landing
                           from which…”

Groundbreaking ceremony for the IOOF Home at York on April 28, 1910.

It is safe to say that the members of the IOOF were very proud of their Home. And rightfully so. The building, its furnishings and the farm represented an investment of $135,000. That is comparable to $3.25 million today. However a comparable building couldn’t be constructed for that amount today. The staircase described by Mr. Loomis still exists today. It “leads up from the corridor directly in front of the main entrance” of the Creamery Building in Lincoln’s Haymarket District.   

 In 1916, a few years after the new IOOF Home opened, the Nebraska State Board of Charities and Correction reported that 55 children were living there. All of the children were attending public school in York. Those children would later play a part in this story also.

 

Children in front of the IOOF Home at York in 1913.

 

In 1909, the same year the IOOF bought the Butterfield Farm, County Surveyor A.B. Codding put his surveying chains to work at what is now the corner of Nobes Road and South Grant Avenue. He surveyed Irregular Tract 21 which was sold to York County for $75 for use as a public road. It provided an angled route from the foot of Lincoln Avenue over to the quarter section line that “folk long died” had probably already been using as the road south out of town.  In a fashion that was not uncommon in Deed Records from those days, it was recorded that the owner, Harriet Simpson, was “relieved from the responsibility of keeping the [corner] clear of growth of weeds and brush.” That transaction is the first in a series that is a commentary in itself on the interaction of private and governmental interests.

 The next year, when Harriet Simpson was 77 years old, she sold her farm at the end of Lincoln Avenue and adjacent to the IOOF property to John Maguire. The deed recorded the legal description of the land noted that irregular tract, by citing the exception of “that part of the north east corner now used as public road.”

 Before long John and Mary Maguire sold the farm to the State of Nebraska, again noting the exception of that Irregular Tract 21.  The reason for the purchase of the farm by the State of Nebraska soon became clear to the public when the weekly New Teller headlined a front page story with, “York Lands Reformatory.” The planned reformatory was a new institution designed to hold women guilty of misdemeanors such as “petit larceny, vagrancy, habitual drunkenness, of being a common prostitute, or frequenting disorderly houses of prostitution.” Female convicts were at that time confined on the third floor of the administration building being supervised by the Warden’s wife. Those women who had committed felonies wouldn’t be transferred to housing at the York facility until 1933.

 The York community was excited about obtaining the new institution. Commercial Club members had travelled to Lincoln to discuss with the State Board of Control “York’s invitation…to locate its custodial farm for women” near the city. On January 5, 1920 board members had been “driven over the territory immediately adjacent to the city” by club members to view available sites. The Maguire farm was purchased five days later.

On January 17^th the board of managers of the IOOF Home met to discuss the planned reformatory. The board was of “one mind that harm would accrue to their home from the location of the custodial farm on an adjoining tract.” Community leaders in York were sympathetic to their concerns and agreed to help find an alternative site for the reformatory.
A complication surfaced in the search for a resolution. The problem involved the legal authority of the state agency to buy, but not sell land. The solution that emerged from extensive negotiation was that a “syndicate” of York community leaders would raise the money to buy an alternative property. A deed for the Maguire farm would be forwarded to them if approved by a future session of the legislature.

Charles McCloud and other citizens of York purchased the site described as being a mile and a half west of the city on the Pershing Highway. The Nebraska Center for Women now stands on that site. During its 1921 session the Legislature approved the transfer of the Maguire Farm to Charles McCloud, of course noting the exception of irregular tract 21.

The story now returns to the road south out of town.

On February 5, 1920 the York County Board adopted a plan presented by a state engineer for the improvement and maintenance of the Meridian Highway, a “paper” highway which ran north and south through the city. The highway which then existed only in the minds, and on the maps, of good roads promoters would later become US 81. But in the winter of 1920 grading of the road was just in the planning stages. The physical work began in the spring.

As has already been noted section lines had been set aside for public roads, but any extra land needed to build the road had to be purchased by the county. The routing decision for the Meridian Highway was for it to turn east at what is now the corner of S. Grant and S. 21^st Street, near the states roads department shops. The county approached George Folts, whose farm sat on that corner, to buy a small piece of land for the purposes of rounding off the corner for easier turning. It was a construction standard of that day that was called a 150 foot radius turn.

George Folts refused to sell because he had an Osage orange hedge that he didn’t want damaged. However, as a result of eminent domain law Mr. Folts was forced to sell, giving up the integrity of his hedge and a triangle of land that was 150 feet on the two legs that adjoined the road. For his loss Mr. Folts was paid $100.

Closer to town the County already owned land on that corner of what is now Nobes Road and S. Grant having purchased it 11 years earlier from Harriet Simpson. A new configuration was needed for an S curve needed to allow the now faster automotive traffic to negotiate the difference between Lincoln Avenue and S. Grant Avenue. Surveyors marked off an area with slightly different dimensions than Irregular Tract 21 and the County paid Charles McCloud $150 dollars for his very small loss.

Twenty two years after the State of Nebraska abandoned its plans to build a reformatory at the foot of Lincoln Avenue they returned to buy a strip across that same land. It became the right-of-way for the gentle curve which today carries automobile traffic south out of town.

Irregular Tract 21 was no longer needed to transition traffic from Lincoln to Grant. In 1979 the County sold the land that they had bought for $75 from Harriet Simpson and again from Charles McCloud for $150. After almost 50 years of property appreciation the land was bought by the Scott-Hourigan company for $1. To be fair there were unnamed “other valuable considerations”, however I suspect the transaction was an attempt at cleaning up ownership records.

Today as one drives to the businesses on S. Lincoln Avenue, or out to Interstate 80, there is little chance that they’ll think about the approximately 50 children living in a building that was described as “command[ing] a long view over the city of York or the Beaver Valley and the country for miles away.” If not for the concern caregivers had for those children the road south out of town would have taken a very different course. By inadvertently taking the “long view” of another kind in 1920 community leaders shaped the traffic patterns of today.