Sidney-Cheyenne County

The plaque ends on ranching, farming and oil, but Sidney's next livelihood came by mail. In December 1961 Dick Cabela bought $45 worth of fishing flies at a Chicago furniture show and sold them from Chappell, with his wife Mary mailing orders; his brother Jim joined in 1963. In 1968 the business moved into a former John Deere dealership in Sidney and grew into an outfitter headquartered here. Bass Pro Shops agreed to buy it on October 3, 2016, for $5.5 billion and closed on September 25, 2017; about 2,000 jobs ended and about 120 moved to Springfield, Missouri.

What the plaque says

Sidney-Cheyenne County In 1867 an Army tent camp was established near here to provide protection for Union Pacific Railroad construction crews. Three years later it became Fort Sidney, the nucleus for the town of Sidney, county seat of Cheyenne County. The rush to the Black Hills gold fields after 1875 confirmed Sidney's importance as a freighting center. The 267-mile Sidney-Black Hills Trail carried the bulk of traffic from the railhead to the mining towns. As railroads extended into northwest Nebraska and Dakota Territory, commerce on the trail diminished and finally ended about 1885. In its frontier heyday Sidney boomed with a colorful admixture of settlers, freighters, cowboys, and soldiers. Throughout these years Cheyenne County was a center of the cattle industry on the high plains. With the decline of the trail and the abandonment of the fort, Sidney became dependent on ranching. Early in the 20th Century homesteaders successfully challenged the cattlemen. Today ranching and farming combine to make Sidney an important agricultural center. In 1949 the first successful oil well in western Nebraska was drilled north of Sidney and petroleum production became a factor in the local economy. Department of Roads Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Sidney — 3.2 mi
  Three surviving buildings of the post that guarded the Union Pacific at Sidney from 1867 to 1894, where a young army surgeon named Walter Reed found a ward full of ugly cases.

More markers nearby

• Cheyenne County — steps away
• Nebraska's Earliest Documented Burial — 2.5 mi
• Fort Sidney — 3.1 mi
• Sidney-Black Hills Trail — 4.5 mi