Calamus Townsite

The organizer the plaque names was Thaddeus Hurlbut Capron, born in Wisconsin on February 11, 1840. He enlisted in the 55th Illinois Infantry in 1861, joined the 9th Infantry in January 1867 and that June married Cynthia Jane Steves, called Jennie, who went west with him; his posts included Camp Wright in California, Fort Laramie and Fort Hartsuff. In June 1876 he fought under Crook at the Rosebud. He retired in 1887 and died on December 24, 1890. In 1897 Jennie copied his diaries and letters into copybooks with her own reminiscences, now at the University of Wyoming.

What the plaque says

Calamus Townsite The town of Calamus was platted in September of 1874. One of its principal organizers was Lt. Thaddeus Capron, an officer in Company C, 9th Infantry Regiment, then stationed at nearby Fort Hartsuff. Calamus was a typical town designed to meet the needs of a military fort. The town boasted the first newspaper in Valley County, a bootmaker, a lawyer, a brickyard, a post office, a saloon, a freight station, two stores, dwellings, and a school. The population probably reached about 65 persons at its peak. The town's front street was on the road from Grand Island to Deadwood, Dakota Territory, via Fort Hartsuff. The town was named after the Calamus River, which joins the North Loup River ten miles to the northwest near present-day Burwell. The name Calamus is derived from the Indian name of a plant and means "food of the muskrat." Following the abandonment of Fort Hartsuff in 1881, the town declined steadily. Its final demise was assured by a terrible wind storm which destroyed the school and other buildings in August, 1885. The Herman Swanson Family and Friends Memorial The Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Hartsuff State Historical Park — 0.5 mi
  A small infantry post of 1874 in the North Loup valley, built of local lime concrete on the raiding road between Lakota and Pawnee country, and kept nearly whole by eighty years of farming.

More markers nearby

• Fort Hartsuff, 1874-1881 — 0.6 mi
• St. Mary's Catholic Church — 3.0 mi
• Kamp Kaleo — 5.7 mi
• The Easter Blizzard of 1873 — 7.1 mi