Undiscovered CrawfordPreserving a rich history and unlocking a bright future depends upon the Story and photographs by Christopher Amundson |
 |
 |
|
Slideshow: |
|
YOU CAN TELL A LOT about a town by the names on the road signs. Just outside of Crawford lie Dead Man Road, Dead Horse Road, Mexican Canyon Road and Squaw Creek Road, which runs along Squaw Mound.
County commissioners thought the name “squaw” attached to local landmarks was out-dated and a little offensive. They suggested renaming it to something more politically and culturally sensitive. Squaw Mound was so named because remains of a Native American woman – a squaw – were found buried there.
Crawford residents recalled the old saying, “if it’s good enough for great-grandpa and grandma, it’s good enough for us.” So, at Crawford today the name “squaw” remains, proclaimed proudly on new, green road signs on the edge of town.
Crawford is like that. It’s a town with a “colorful” past and a strong desire to preserve it just as it was.
“We’re an old cowboy town with great people in a beautiful setting,” said Tim Kreider, who runs an insurance office downtown and is a spark plug for new and creative Crawford projects.
When we visited Crawford, Kreider was test-fitting wooden wagon wheels to hang on lamp posts downtown as well as working with businesses to install horse corrals, hitching posts and watering troughs. These projects are part of an all-out effort to make Crawford more accommodating for tourists, particularly those visiting Fort Robinson State Park who’d welcome a venture into town if it didn’t require leaving their horses behind.
Crawford, situated on the western edge of the Pine Ridge region of Nebraska, is a place where history is in step with the present and where the scenery is as stunning as anyplace in the state. To the north sits the vast Oglala National Grasslands, which includes Toadstool Geologic Park, Hudson-Meng Research and Education Center (see sidebar story) and a handful of bed and breakfasts and tourism businesses.
To the south, east and west, are an inspiring mix of pine forests, grassland, hills, valleys and buttes. From the top of the 1,000-foot Squaw Mound, you can see South Dakota’s Black Hills to the north. With Mount Rushmore and other Black Hills attractions only 100 miles away, Crawford is sometimes called “The Gateway to the Black Hills.”
Arah Hungerford, a land agent and early promoter of Crawford, coined the term, “Garden Beyond the Sandhills.” The definition stuck and is still used to promote the community today.
Crawford was founded in 1886 on the edge of Camp Robinson, which managed some 13,000 displaced and relocated Sioux Indians during the final chapter of the free range of the Plains Indians.
Even by the 1880s, the Crawford area was steeped in rich fur trade, Indian and military history. The Battle of Warbonnet Creek, the surrender and murder of famed Oglala leader Crazy Horse, numerous treaties and ancient Indian folklore are tied to the buttes, hills and plains surrounding – places such as Lover’s Leap, Crow Butte and Squaw Mound.
Under the protection of the military, settlers pushed into the area in the 1880s. By this time, Camp Robinson was a military fort with a permanent military presence.
Jim Soester, now retired from a career in libraries and research, had a great-grandfather who settled on Squaw Mound in the 1880s. There he farmed, ranched and reared 12 children. Soester’s other great-grandfather, on the Bruer side, drove a military supply wagon from Valentine to Fort Robinson, eventually settling in Crawford. It didn’t take him long to realize that a man could make good money from the soldiers.
Even before there was a town of Crawford, great-grandpa Bruer set up a saloon tent on the White River, where the road crossed to Fort Robinson. Today, the Ponderosa Villa retirement home is on that spot.
“He divided it in half and loaned out the other half to Calamity Jane when she brought her girls down from Deadwood, [S.D.],” Soester said.
With farming and ranching, supplying alcohol and women to the soldiers gave the frontier town of Crawford its early reasons for existence. Upstairs in what is today the Ranch House restaurant, you can still see the small rooms which hint that this landmark building was, indeed, one of Crawford’s many brothels. It will turn 100 years old this year, and Butch and Becky Sellman and their daughter, Georganne Shaw, operate a fine restaurant on the main floor. Becky can envision a quaint bed and breakfast upstairs, with cleaned up clientele, of course.