Kamp Kaleo

Phineas W. Hitchcock, the senator the plaque credits with the Timber Culture Act, was a New Yorker, born in New Lebanon in 1831, who settled in Omaha in the spring of 1857, when it was still a small settlement. He sat in Congress as the territory's delegate from 1865 to 1867 and as a senator from 1871 to 1877, and he died at his Omaha home in July 1881 of a ruptured appendix. His son Gilbert founded the Omaha World-Herald. The camp on the McClimans claim has grown to about 240 acres; Kaleo means to call.

What the plaque says

Kamp Kaleo On September 29, 1875, Richard McClimans filed a timber claim on this site under the provisions of the Timber Culture Act of 1873. The original act, sponsored by Senator Phineas W. Hitchcock of Nebraska, enabled homesteaders to acquire up to a quarter section of additional land by agreeing to cultivate timber on the tract. In 1960, a portion of the McClimans Timber Claim was donated to the Nebraska Conference of the United Church of Christ by the family of Osceola and Laura McClimans Cram, as a memorial in their honor. Named Kamp Kaleo, additional acreage was acquired by the church in 1961, and added to the original donation. Many of the trees on the grounds of Kamp Kaleo are survivors of the original McClimans Timber Claim, and some 32 acres of forest have been designated a managed nature area by the Soil Conservation Society of America. Although the Timber Culture Act was largely unsuccessful in the promotion of tree planting on the plains, Kamp Kaleo testifies that pioneer farmers often made significant contributions to the natural beauty of Nebraska. Mrs. Gaylord McClimans Wallace Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Hartsuff State Historical Park — 5.2 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

• The Pebble Creek Fight — 1.5 mi
• The Easter Blizzard of 1873 — 1.5 mi
• Garfield County — 2.1 mi
• Railroad Turntable, 1887-1983 — 2.4 mi