By William P. Williams

From The Colorado Historical Encyclopedia, Colorado Historical Society, 1960.

THAT SOUTH PLATTE land ain't fit for nuthin' but rattlesnakes and Injuns. Billy, if the Sioux don't lift your hair, you'll starve to death."

With those words of admonition following him, William Shaw Hadfield, thirty-three years old, and late of Derbyshire, England, turned his team of six head of oxen south and headed out of Greeley to carve his niche in history as the first permanent white settler in what is now known as Logan County.

True, there were others before him, but they were transients. Explorers, fur trappers, and gold seekers all came before, following the South Platte to the mountains. Because of the traffic, the Overland Trail was born and stage and Pony Express relay stations were established every thirteen miles along the route from North Platte, Nebraska, to Laramie, Wyoming.

Three miles north of the, present site of Sterling and east of the river, one such combination fort-and-horse exchange was built. It was called Valley Station. On one occasion the station was defended from marauding Utes by emigrants hidden behind breast-works of sacks of corn. Valley Station has long since crumbled, but a monument on the grounds of the Logan County Museum, just east of the river from Sterling, commemorates the fort. The museum, which is open every summer, was dedicated in 1936 to the memory of the local pioneers.

However, it was in 1871 on the 15th of April when Hadfield pitched his tent on Pawnee Creek, three miles south of the present Sterling, and began a new life which ended fifty-six years later with the fulfillment of his dreams. He became one of the county's first commissioners and successful cattlemen in an era before the ranges were fenced.

"Uncle Billy," as he was called in the autumn of his long life, was the first to face the drouths, blizzards, loneliness, and Indians, but he was joined in a few years by a type of pioneer family peculiar only to this section of Colorado.

From the war-ravaged desolation of Southern plantations, despairing of "carpet-bag" rule, came former slave owners and blue blood Southern aristocrats, eager to sink their family roots in Western soil, far away from the area of destruction and reconstruction. Many came and the majority stayed, refounding family dynasties . . . dynasties born and uprooted in the shade of magnolia and live oak trees and transplanted to soil which heretofore had nurtured only sagebrush, buffalo grass, and cactus.

These were among the first: from Mississippi came the Kings and Cheairs; from Alabama came the Propsts and Powells; from Tennessee came the Perkins family; from North Carolina came the Davises; and from Virginia came the Harrises.

And along with the settlers came the gradual but inevitable transition from a land of cattle and cowboys, roundups, and unbroken range to an almost exclusively farming country.

There were three ways in which land could be obtained from the government: first, by pre-emption claims; second, by homesteads; and third, by timber claims. Because this country was practically treeless, the government shortened the time for proving up on land, according to the number of trees planted. The present groves surrounding Sterling came into being in that manner.

The lack of lumber for homes and the shortage of water for crops were two of the major handicaps found by the southerners. The lumber shortage was solved by building houses of sod, which reportedly were cool in summer and warm in winter. The thick sod walls also protected the settlers from the deadly, although infrequent, raids by the rampaging Utes and Sioux.

The first irrigation ditch was completed in 1874, and the land that only knew buffalo grass drank in the life-giving water and began producing crops hitherto unheard-of in the South Platte Valley.

Wheat, a staple item of the region today, also made its initial appearance in the early days. The yield was small, as the hot, dry summers, followed by the severe winters, took their toll of the golden grain.

And other enemies of the homesteader were still at large . . . range cattle and buffalo. This necessitated the building of fences . . . fences of cedar posts and smooth wire hauled by wagons from Greeley. But even these could not stop the onslaught of the stampeding animals, and it was not until the coming of the railroad into the valley in 1881, which brought with it a large supply of the newly-invented barbed wire, that the death blow to the vast range lands was dealt.

When the settlers learned the Union Pacific was extending its line from Julesburg to LaSalle, they realized a town would be established somewhere in the neighborhood of their temporary settlement, which was named Sterling by a railroad surveyor several years before in honor of his hometown in Illinois. One of the original settlers, M. C. King, in a moment of inspiration, calculated that the vicinity offered a logical division point between Omaha and Denver, and he acted immediately upon the idea.

He went by horseback to Sidney, Nebraska, and caught a train to Omaha, where he offered the officials of the railroad eighty acres on the present right-of-way if the railroad would build its shops there. The offer was accepted, and the future growth and wealth of Sterling and Logan County was assured.

Five years before the coming of the Union Pacific to the valley, Colorado was admitted as the thirty-eighth state to the Union. At this time, the "Centennial State" was composed of seventeen counties, one of which was Weld, embracing the entire northeastern corner of the state and a total territory of 10,494 square miles.

With the advent of the railroad and its permanent shops, Sterling became a booming community, and the citizens applied for articles of incorporation in the fall of 1884. An election was held within the proposed city limits on the eighth of November, with sixty-five votes for and four against incorporation. The final decree of court, entered November 10, 1884, declared Sterling an incorporated town.

Even before incorporation, a movement was started to sever bonds with the mother county of Weld and create several new counties, among them, the County of Logan. The proposal was turned down by the state legislature in 1882, but-the seeds for severance had been planted.

The main argument for the division of Weld County, which ultimately resulted in the formation of Morgan, Washington, Sedgwick, Phillips, Yuma, and Logan Counties, was the great distance to be traveled from the South Platte Valley to Greeley for any business of legal nature.

The Denver News of December 25, 1882, was quoted as saying, in part: "A proposition was made before the last legislature to create a new county, with Sterling as the county seat, and the people of this vicinity were greatly disappointed over its failure to go through. A News reporter recently on the ground is fully persuaded that it would be only simple justice in our law makers to concede their demand . . . There can be no mistaking the fact that the people of the lower end of Weld County are united and determined in their efforts to secure a new county, and when such a people set their heads together, it is only a matter of time when the object is accomplished. Their demand is just and it should be conceded."

In rebuttal, an article signed the "Old Farmer," appearing in the Greeley Tribune-Herald, had this to say: "There has been some talk, loud talk about the 'great agricultural resources' of the proposed county. As a matter of fact, the greater portion of this section is arid land, worthless prairie without inhabitants . . . Now the fact is, that although several irrigation canals of considerable capacity have been constructed for a number of years in the eastern portion of Weld County, but a very small portion of the land, not one thousand acres, is under cultivation . . . And so, while the extent to which that section can be cultivated, or made available for any purpose, is a matter of doubt, it certainly is not in the direction of public policy to undertake to force the land to pay taxes in support of a 'wild-cat' county."

Despite "Old Farmer's" derogatory declamation, the state legislature found fit on February 25, 1887, to cut Weld County into seven parts, one of which formed the boundaries of Logan County.

In outline Logan County is rectangular, covering an area of 1,183,360 acres. The assessed valuation of the county at the time of its organization was $1,420,085, and the population was nearly 3000 persons.

The only towns were Sterling, Atwood, Merino, and Red Lion, the latter having passed into the realm of ghost towns. Iliff was laid out in 1887, and Fleming and Crook were only small settlements, composed chiefly of homesteaders and cattlemen.

The great cattle herds were fast disappearing and with them, the men who had operated large ranches on the open range. Crowded back to the unirrigable land and the country unsuitable for farming, the "cattle barons" made their last stands.

The Texas Longhorns, which had grazed the valley lands by the thousands, were now seen only in small, scattered herds. Their owners, among whom were John W. Iliff, J. L. Brush, Jerome Landrum, A. G. Sherwin, and the Henderson, Lutin, Reagan, Buchanan and Fitch brothers, either left the country or conformed to the pattern of changing times.

And the changing times resulted in greater profits to those who remained. They realized that purebreds mature more quickly and produce heavier and better quality offspring than the Longhorns, so they began to bring in Hereford and Shorthorn bulls and breed up the range cattle.

Unlike the fast fortune seekers of the prairies, the permanent settlers brought with them the desire not only to provide for their livelihood, but also to provide for their children's education.

So it was that in October 1875, the first school opened in Logan County. Twenty pupils, ranging in age from four to twenty, attended classes in a fourteen by sixteen adobe hut on the site of Old Sterling. The teacher was fifteen-year-old Miss Carrie Ayres who reported: "We had a dirt floor, but a good shingled roof .. . Each pupil furnished his or her own seat, so one may imagine the varied collection brought together."

It was in this adobe building that the first literary society was organized and the first Sunday school started.

The census of 1890 shows 1104 persons of school age in the county, 900 enrolled, of which 37 were in high school. There were at that time, only fifteen years after the first school was started, thirty schoolhouses in the county with a property evalution of $30,000.

Religion, too, was not forgotten. And, as the residents were principally southerners, the first two churches established were the Cumberland Presbyterian and the Methodists of the Southern Branch. The first church structure, built in 1878, belonged to the Presbyterians, who in return for the labor and materials furnished, let the Methodists use it until their respective church was completed a year later.

Although the climate of the valley was conducive to good health, the need for a doctor became apparent. Earlier, the residents cared for themselves if the disease or injury was minor. If it was of major consequence, the patient was taken to Greeley or Sidney, Nebraska, for treatment. On various occasions, a new "doctor" would present himself, but because of various circumstances including reported cases of "malpractice" would leave the country rather hurriedly for his own health's sake.

The situation caused S. R. Propst to write a letter to Dr. Reed in Greeley, requesting that a doctor be sent to the valley, who would "stay sober long enough to attend a patient." The doctor who arrived in April 1883 was Dr. J. N. Hall, a graduate of Harvard Medical School. He became known as a competent physician, and the settlers proudly pointed him out as 'the only physician between Greeley and North Platte."

Dr. Hall stayed eight years, ministering to the needs of the entire county, leaving only after being relieved by another doctor. He went to Denver, taking with him his bride, Miss Carrie Ayres, thecounty's first schoolteacher.

Thus it was that Logan County received the services of its first professional man. As other settlers poured into the region, more doctors, lawyers, ministers, and teachers, realizing this was no "wildcat" county, came to pursue their professions.

These professional men rounded out the circle of ranchers, farmers, businessmen, and railroaders to complete the birth of the county and give assurance to its continued growth, all of which had begun with the foresight and fortitude of one man . . . "Uncle Billy" Hadfield.

"Uncle Billy" would be amazed at the wealth of the county if he were to return today. The assessed evaluation of the land as of 1957 was $65,332,670, with 1,327 farms covering 1,079,567 crop producing acres, as of 1955. The variety of crops would astound him further . . . listed in their "dollar" importance are wheat, sugar beets, corn, barley, alfalfa, sorghums and millet, beans, wild hay, and oats.

The cattle industry has also prospered with approximately 75,000 breeding cattle and an annual cattle fattening program of 80,000 head.

Even "Uncle Billy" had no idea of the hidden wealth under the soil of Logan County . . . the wealth of "black gold" or oil.

Development of the Denver-Julesburg oil basin has made a tremendous impact on the county's economy with 1,434 wells drilled up to July 1, 1957, and 39,049,220 barrels of oil valued at $97,623,050 produced from 596 wells since drilling started in 1950.

No greater tribute could be paid to the pioneers of this region than that which appears on the headstone of the grave of W. C. Harris, an early cattleman, in Riverside Cemetery. The stone carries a bas-relief cast in bronze depicting a pioneer and his family coming west in a covered wagon looking toward the horizon where, from a multitude of clouds, rises a skyscraper with an airplane flying overhead. The inscription simply states:

"They dreamed dreams and had visions, and they came true."

Footnote: Credit for the majority of the material which went into this historical sketch should be given to Emma Burke Conklin, from whose book "A Brief History of Logan County, Colorado" it was taken, although revised.