Historic Platte Valley

Nancy Jane Fletcher Morton was captured at Plum Creek. Born in Clarke County, Indiana, on February 8, 1845, she had married Thomas Frank Morton, who ran a wagon freighting company, in 1860. In August 1864, on a trip to Denver, their wagon party was attacked west of Fort Kearny, and her husband, brother and cousin were killed. She was ransomed and released in December 1864 and reached home at Sidney, Iowa, on March 9, 1865. She remarried that year and died in Iowa in 1912. Phelps County raised a monument at the Plum Creek graves on November 9, 1930.

What the plaque says

Historic Platte Valley Through this valley passed the Oregon Trail, high- way for early explorers, fur traders, California-bound gold seekers, freighters, and brave pioneers seeking new homes in the West. Traffic was especially heavy from 1843 to 1866. At times as many as 800 wagons passed this point daily, heading both directions. The Pony Express passed through the valley, followed by the first telegraph lines. This was also the military road to western destinations. Beginning in 1847, the Mormons broke a new trail on the north side of the Platte. Indian raids by the Sioux and Cheyenne were severe in the 1860's, and several attacks occurred near here. During the Plum Creek Massacre a few miles west, wagons were burned and several people killed or captured. Huge herds of buffalo once roamed these prairies, often stopping traffic on the trail. In the 1870's hunters slaughtered them by the thousands. Today the Platte Valley is one of the nation's rich agricultural areas, disproving the opinion of early explorers who saw the Great Plains only as the Great American Desert. Phelps County Historical Society Historical Land Mark Council

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Kearny State Historical Park — 20 mi
  The 1848 army post on the Platte, built on a strip of Pawnee land bought for $2,000 in goods, where emigrant wagons passed by the thousand and only the cottonwoods outlasted the fort.

More markers nearby

• Elm Creek — 4.9 mi
• The Tobin Indian Raid — 8.7 mi
• Kearney-Fort Kearny — 12 mi
• Holdrege Silt Loam: The Nebraska State Soil — 13 mi