Jim McKee: Antelope County was once called the 'Great American Desert'

JIM MCKEE

From 1806, and perhaps more universally, to Stephen Long’s expedition, the area now including Antelope County was referred to as the Great American Desert, a region where nothing would ever grow, no man would ever live.

With Nebraska’s statehood in 1867 and the Homestead Act, that description faded, yet settlement was still slow. With developing population, incidents arose, including the intriguing question of how the second largest city in Antelope County is seemingly not in Antelope County.

Before the Mormons crossed the area in the spring of 1847 it was annually devastated each fall by prairie fires, adding to its image as a desert. In the fall of 1868, with the Mormon Trail still visible, the first, albeit short-lived, settlers arrived. Allen Hopkins of Illinois (Ohio) fil