Red Cloud, 1871-1971

Silas Garber, whose dugout served as the polling place, had a longer story than the plaque can hold. Born in Ohio in 1833, he rose to captain in the 27th Iowa Infantry, traded livestock in California and came to the Republican Valley in 1870. After two terms as governor he came back, and in 1888 he built a stone-fronted bank on Webster Street, now the Farmers and Merchants Bank and the Foundation's first museum. Cather knew Silas and Lyra Garber as a girl and made them Captain and Mrs. Forrester in A Lost Lady (1923).

What the plaque says

1871 Red Cloud 1971 Red Cloud, named for the Oglala Sioux chief, was founded early in 1871 on homestead land filed upon by Silas Garber and company July 17, 1870, at Beatrice, the nearest land office. It is one of the oldest communities in the Republican Valley. When Webster County was organized, Red Cloud was voted the county seat at the first county election, April 19, 1871. The election was held in the dugout of Silas Garber, Nebraska's governor, 1875-1879. The mainline of the Burlington and Missouri River Railway reached here in 1879, accelerating immigration from the East and abroad, bringing together a colorful variety of cultural heritages. During the 1880's Red Cloud served as a division center for the railroad. The architectural design of Webster Street was established during that prosperous time when many of the first frame and log structures were replaced by more elaborate buildings of brick and stone. Red Cloud was the childhood home of Willa Cather and it is known throughout the world as the setting for her six Nebraska novels and numerous short stories. The pioneers she knew in the town and on the nearby farms live on in her writings. Red Cloud Centennial Commission Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Willa Cather Center — steps away
  The restored Moon Block on Red Cloud's Webster Street, home of the Willa Cather Foundation, with the town she grew up in and wrote about laid out around it.
• Willa Cather Memorial Prairie — 5.8 mi
  Six hundred and twelve acres of never-plowed mixed-grass prairie south of Red Cloud, once Kitkehahki Pawnee country, named for the writer who said the grass was the country.
• Home on the Range Cabin — 26 mi
  Dr. Brewster Higley's 1872 homestead cabin on West Beaver Creek in Smith County, where he wrote the poem that became Home on the Range, kept on its ground by a farm couple who would not sell it.

More markers nearby

• Cather Childhood Home — steps away
• Grace Episcopal Church — 0.2 mi
• Webster County, 1871-1971 — 0.3 mi
• St. Juliana Falconieri Catholic Church — 0.5 mi