Spring Ranche

A. T. Andreas's 1882 history dates James Bainter's settlement here to June 8, 1864, calls it the county's first homestead, and credits his store on the overland stage road with about $5,000 in goods. A Pawnee man brought him word that a Sioux war party had struck the ranch upriver. Bainter sent his family to Pawnee Ranch a mile east, saw the smoke of his own store, and helped hold that sod-walled ranch for three days, women loading the guns, until a large party of Pawnees arrived and helped drive the attackers off.

What the plaque says

Spring Ranche The original Spring Ranche, located two miles south of here on the north side of the Little Blue River, was founded about 1863. James Bainter, the first permanent settler, operated a store and inn for travelers along the Oregon-California Trail. The ranche was burned in 1864 when Lakota Sioux and their allies attacked settlements along the Little Blue. Spring Ranche was later rebuilt. The village of Spring Ranch dates from 1870 when a post office was established south of the river. A saw mill was in operation a year later. In 1886 the townsite moved across the river, where the St. Joseph and Grand Island Railroad was being built. The village once boasted several businesses and a population of about 100, but few traces remain today. In 1885 Spring Ranch residents Elizabeth Taylor and her brother Thomas Jones were accused of barn burning and murder. Before they could be tried, they were lynched by a mob on March 15. Taylor and Jones, along with other early settlers, are buried in the Spring Ranch Cemetery. Spring Ranche River Festival 1993 Oregon Trail Sesquicentennial Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Willa Cather Center — 28 mi
  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.

More markers nearby

• Kingston Cemetery — 6.9 mi
• Crystal Lake — 11 mi
• Naval Ammunition Depot — 11 mi
• Clay Center — 11 mi