It was awful to see the Jack rabbits coming down the hill on fire and they would head for the stacks of hay, running into them and then setting them on fire. I don’t know how many there were, but the hills were covered with dead Jack rabbits.
While searching the internet for historical information related to North Platte, Nebraska, I came across a University of Nebraska article from 1978: Prairie Fires and the Nebraska Pioneer by Donald E. Westover. The following, including Lincoln County narratives, is excerpted from that paper.
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For thousands of years prairie fires were a common occurrence in the great plains region of North America. Along with wind, rain, snow, and sunshine, fire was a major ecological force. Long before the white man’s influence became a factor Nebraska’s prairie land had been shaped, even perpetuated by this ever present force.
Early prairie fires resulted mostly from lightning, although some were set by Indians for hunting purposes. Early settlers who homesteaded Nebraska’s prairie found out very soon about the fury of fire.
The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Wildlife, in an attempt to document Nebraska’s major prairie fires, asked the people of the state to send in their first-hand accounts of the fires which swept across Nebraska years ago.
An excerpt from one of those accounts:
We had heard grim stories of families being roasted alive in their sod shacks. If the sod was fresh and new it would not burn as fire roared over it. But if it was several years old and grass and weeds grew on it, there was little chance of escape. Mama read a page in the Bible, closed her eyes and said, “God, please help us. And I’ll help You because You don’t want these children to burn, either.”
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Clarence Phillips
Lincoln Co.
1907
It was a beautiful spring morning on April 7, 1907. I was eleven (11) years old and was staying with my brother, Grant Phillips of Wallace, Nebraska, to help him with his chores. He had a herd of brood mares and was raising little mules also. The herd contained twenty-seven (27) head and seven (7) of them already had little mules. By the last of April we would have had twenty-seven little mules. The mares were of good stock, no pony ·stock either. Everthing was fine that morning until we saw the smoke rolling up in the northwest. Mae, my brother’s wife, and I were alone because Grant had to go to North Platte on saddle horse to take care of some business. He took the only horse on the ranch.
It was about 2:00 p.m. and the wind came up, gusting up to 35-40 mph. The fire was now up to the ranch house and barn. There was an old Jack-Ass in the corral and an old milk cow that Mae’s mother had given her. I took the Jack up to the windmill and tied him to one of the anchor posts. The tank was really full now, so we took the milk cow and tied her to the clothes line. We took buckets of water and threw on the ground around the Jack and milk cow so the fire couldn’t get to them. Mae and I carried water to the house and the barn, but we lost the barn. The pig shed next to the barn contained two nice brood sows and fourteen little pigs, which burned up as we couldn’t get them out.
It was awful to see the Jack rabbits coming down the hill on fire and they would head for the stacks of hay, running into them and then setting them on fire. I don’t know how many there were, but the hills were covered with dead Jack rabbits.
The mares were all at the far fence, huddled in a pile, where they burned. Some of them were still standing, with their ears, tails and hooves burned off. They had their eyes burned out also. When Grant got home, he could not shoot them, so some of the neighbors shot them for him. He really cared for those mares and it took him several years to come out of the deal.
Grant didn’t have all of his mares paid for, but the bank went along with him and he finally got them all paid for.
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This is another experience about a neighbor in this same fire. He and his family came from Missouri and had never seen a fire like this one. If it hadn’t been for a young man, Charley Kidwell, who lived in Wallace, this family whose name was Walter Tucker, would have been killed in this fire. The family was in the wagon going west over the hills to pick up some corn they had bought. Charley saw them and rode out to warn them, as they were heading straight into the line of the fire. He caught them, tied his horse to their team and wagon and drove them to safety. If it hadn’t been for Charley, the family of Walter, his wife and daughter would have been burned up in the fire. The fire was then about three miles wide and had burned about twenty-five miles long. There was no stopping it as it jumped the fire guards that people had made to stop it.
The fire burned to the railroad and that stopped the head fire, so all that was left to fight was the side lines. It was a very black day, April 7, 1907, for many families lost almost everything they had to the fire.
Walter Tucker’s daughter, lives in Sharon Springs, Kansas and she is going to give you her version of that fire. She and Charley got married in later years. She is now a widow and must be close to eighty (80) years young but she has a wonderful memory and can relate her personal experiences with the fire.
We were kids together when we all lived at Wallace and went to the same school and danced a little at the old dance hall. I will close for now, but this is what happened that April 7, 1907, I remembered it well and I will soon be 81 years young.
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Mrs. Ruby (Tucker) Kidwell
Lincoln Co.
1907
I remember very clearly two fires. The first fire was in April, 1907, and took the life of my cousin’s husband, Eddie Kain of Wallace, Nebraska, leaving his widow with two little children. Many head of his stock perished with him as well as his horse. When the horse went down Eddie was afire. His clothes were all burned off except for his boots. He walked a mile and a half to his family, stopping and putting dirt down the tops of his boots. He made it home, but lived only a few hours. That fire did so much damage.
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My father, Walter Tucker, was helping his half-brother Henry Bebout with farm work five miles from our home. I had been hauling corn from my uncle’s farm with a team and wagon. That morning was the most beautiful day—not a breath of air stirring. While mother and I were choring, our little dog howled and cried so pityful that mother and the dog decided to go with me to haul the corn. Mother only had one arm and this was the only time she had gone with me. We put the dog between us on the spring seat of the wagon and was soon on our way, before it got so hot. We had never seen a prairie fire, but had heard how terrible they were. We had no idea what they were talking about. My family lived in Arbela, Missouri, before coming to Nebraska and they never had them there.
We loaded our wagon with corn (the wagon had two additional side boards besides the wagon box) and started for home. We didn’t go by my uncle’s ranch house since it would have taken us longer to reach home. By that time the wind had come up from the northwest and we could smell smoke. The sky was looking dark in the northwest, but we started home anyway. I don’t believe we got over half-way when the smoke, wind and dust got so bad we couldn’t see. I made the horses trot—I thought real fast and hard—but all at once a horseback rider rode up and jumped off his horse and tied his horse to our team. We could hardly see him. Charles Kidwell, the horseback rider, jumped up in the wagon and said, “There’s a prairie fire right behind us, hang on, we have got to hurry or it will catch us.” And how we hurried. We never took such a ride in our lives! Charlie lashed the team with the end of the lines to make them run. The wagon was going too fast that we unloaded corn from then on. The wind changed to the east, and we were all choking from the smoke as the side fire was right behind us. He couldn’t see any road, and we didn’t know where we were. Charlie Kidwell, was from Wallace, Nebraska, and he lived in town four miles from the farmstead.
Since Charlie knew I was hauling corn with a team and wagon, he saddled his old faithful horse “Nig” and started to find me. Charlie went to the farmstead, not even a dog was there; so he started northwest, across the prairie between fire guards. He never lost his direction, while he was trying to get to a fire guard with us. So when the wind turned east, it was then the head fire went on east, but the side fire was coming right for us. He never once let up whipping the horses, as he knew our range cattle were in the north pasture. When we did get home, he said, “Take care of the horses—l’m going to bring the range cattle in.” The cattle were bawling and running, but they really ran when he caught up with them. A neighbor Fred Swanson, had brought the milk cows from another pasture. Fred was frantic when no one was at the farmstead. He also knew I was hauling corn from the ranch.
The head fire burned everthing in its path. One of our neighbors the J. M. Werley family had four boys—the mister and two older boys went to fight the side fire, the older boy on horseback. The rest of the family stayed at home and clubbed jackrabbits when they ran into the hay and feed stacks and farm buildings, as the jackrabbits were on fire. That saved the farm buildings.
The father of a family just east of the Werley’s took his older boys and did likewise. That was Mr. Yonker. When the Yonkers’ got home all their buildings were burned to the ground, and all the livestock that were in feed lots and in the barn (horses in the barn; hogs in the pens) were dead. Everything was gone! They had an outside cave, and that’s where Mr. Yonker found his family. They had taken a big comforter and hung it up at the bottom door, soaked it with some water, then shut the wooden door down, and it was just starting to burn when the men folks got there. The windmill and well-house were built on sand or they would have burned.
On Sunday after the fire, Charlie asked me if I would like to see the remains of the fire. Oh yes, I did, and you can bet your last dollar, I’ll never forget the sight I saw. Horses, cattle, rabbits were still burning. There were so many rabbits that year. I don’t remember of any lives being lost, because I was heart sick and only 17. We heard a pitiful meow, and we found a burned cat in the well house. Charlie said, “Go get in the buggy, I can’t leave this cat here.” So he put it to sleep.
My daddy took the picture of the burned, dead horses, and he was going to take more pictures, but we were all sick at heart. In the picture, my mother is in the spring wagon, the two horseback riders are my two cousins, Ora Rhea on the light colored horse and Owen Tucker on the dark horse, then in the buggy next was Charlie and I, the next buggy I have forgotten who.
Charlie and I were married in December, 1917. We moved to Sharon Springs, Kansas, in the spring of 1920. I have lost my parents, my little boy, and now Charlie is gone. He died in 1973. I’ll soon be 80, but I’ll never forget that… fire. I have seen a few since, but nothing like that one.
If it hadn’t been for Charlie, my mother, the dog, the horses, and I would have perished in that fire. Our friends and neighbors knew he saved our lives, and we will never forget his thoughtfulness. I hope never to go through an experience like that again.
