James Charles Dahlman and 11 of his fellow N-Bar Ranch cowboys sat astride their horses in April 1879, staring into the abyss of Nebraska’s Sandhills. In another place, they might have considered their task at hand routine – search for thousands of cattle that drifted from their ranch into the dunes. Yet the Sandhills were far from just another place.

Strange stories of the Sandhills once filtered into cow camps and ranches along its edges – frightful tales of those who ventured into its shifting sand and maze of trails, and never returned. As early as 1860, white pioneers dubbed the Sandhills the “Great American Desert” – an uninhabitable place for neither man nor beast.

Pioneer rancher E.S. “Zeke” Newman, aware of the peril, placed line-riders along his southern boundary when entering the Sandhills. He hoped to prevent his cattle from drifting into the Sandhills and forever vanishing.

Newman first established his ranch in 1877 after the surrender that May of the great Lakota warrior Crazy Horse, whose name alone spread fear throughout the region. Newman built his N-Bar Ranch at the mouth of Antelope Creek on the Niobrara River, 20 miles east of where the town of Gordon is now located. His range stretched 40 miles east and west, and 65 miles north and south, and his outfit primarily supplied the government fresh beef for the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in the Dakota Territory.

Newman’s line-riders played a critical role in fulfillment of those federal contracts. They served as the last line of defense between the herd and the forbidden Sandhills. Only their task became impossible in March 1879 when a blizzard hammered Nebraska. Newman and his cowboys estimated at least 6,000 head of cattle had drifted into the feared wasteland during the mighty storm – nearly half of the ranch’s herd.

Foreman Billy Irwin tried to convince Newman that a small party of cowhands should attempt to retrieve the missing cattle. The prevailing thought among seasoned ranchers was that the Sandhills were unsustainable for cattle, but even more perilous for humans. Hardened soldiers and rugged cowboys who ventured into the Sandhills always returned with the same general description: A desolate patch of earth void of water. Newman carefully weighed the risks before he reluctantly agreed with Irwin’s plan. The N-Bar boss then approved the selection of a dozen of his bravest cowboys for the mission.

Dahlman – then known as “Texas Jim” – was one of the 12. He rode side by side with his compatriots as they embarked for the daring round-up on April 15. Now each cowhand gazed wearily into those dreaded Sandhills, although Dahlman may as well have also been staring at his destiny. The 22-year-old Texan seemed uniquely qualified for the moment. Comrades thought of him as a sensational rider, a crack shot, and most notably, a fearless man.

None of those traits were coincidental. Born December 15, 1856, in Yorktown, Texas, Dahlman grew to adulthood on a ranch. He began riding as soon as he could walk, often tied to the back of his own pony. By age 17, Dahlman displayed his expert riding skills when he won a statewide race. Yet Texas had already taught him something entirely different about the skills needed to survive on the frontier – abilities far more important than taming an unruly steed.

Violence, the rule of law, and vigilante justice mingled freely in the Texas of his youth. The wiry, brown-eyed cowboy thus became keenly adept at how to wield a pistol. “As I became a young man, about the only right I knew was that of the pistol and a quick hand,” Dahlman once said. “The law was but poorly enforced, and men lived by the right of might. I got to be pretty tough. I admit it. I could see that it was only a question of time when I would get into trouble …”

Predictably, the worst kind of trouble found Dahlman shortly after his 22nd birthday in 1878. Trouble arrived in the form of his former brother-in-law, Charley Bree. Bad blood developed between the two a few years earlier when Bree married one of Dahlman’s elder sisters. Dahlman thought of Bree as “a shiftless sort of fellow, nothing more or less than an outlaw.”

Dahlman’s low opinion of Bree only worsened when the drifter abandoned his sister shortly after the birth of their child. The quick-tempered cowboy answered Bree’s despicable act with a threat: He would kill Bree on sight the next time he saw him. “Then one day, purely by accident, we met in a town where neither was known,” Dahlman recalled. “No sooner did we face each other than we both pulled and shot.”

Bree’s blast missed its mark. Dahlman’s shot struck Bree above one eye, “dropping him like lead.” Dahlman fled the scene and never looked back. He later admitted he wasn’t going to wait for a town marshal to decide his fate. He rode hard for Arkansas, where he hid under the alias “Jim Murray” and waited for his pal, “Stonewall” Bennett Irwin.

Bennett’s brother, Billy, worked as a foreman at Newman’s newly established ranch on the Niobrara River in Nebraska – a place where Dahlman could find work and hide from the ghost of his recent troubles. Irwin and Dahlman traveled by train to Omaha, where they disembarked on a frigid day in March 1879. Now, within a month of his arrival, Dahlman and his fellow N-Bar cowboys rode without hesitation into the unknown of the Sandhills. They were determined to return with Newman’s cattle, and more importantly, avoid death.

Two days into the expedition, another blizzard blasted the cowboys. Dahlman, who lived the remainder of his life in Nebraska, called it one of the worst blizzards he had ever witnessed. The storm raged for three days. Dahlman and the others huddled together, desperately trying to stay warm by burning the scant wood they hauled for cooking and any buffalo or cow chips they could scavenge. No one dared to stray too far from camp.

Finally, the storm dissipated. Scouting parties quickly departed to find any signs of Newman’s cattle. What they discovered left them astounded. “We soon began to strike cattle perfectly contended in their new home amidst the splendid grass and water in the valley,” Dahlman recalled. The first batch of native cattle they found were “as wild as a bunch of deer” and “as fat as any ever brought out of a feed lot.” Dahlman added, “We could hardly believe our own eyes.”

Newman’s cowboys roamed the Sandhills for the next five weeks, rounding up 7,000 N-Bar cattle, as well as 1,000 mavericks. Of the 1,000 mavericks – or “natives” – 300 head were determined to be between 1 and 4 years old, shattering any notion cattle couldn’t survive in the Sandhills.

News of the N-Bar round-up in the Sandhills spread like a stampeding herd throughout the West. Cowmen journeyed from near and far to hear the extraordinary story, elevating Dahlman and his fellow cowboys to living legends on cattle trails everywhere and forever changing the way ranchers viewed the Sandhills. Soon, instead of shielding cattle from the Sandhills, ranchers ordered them driven into the once-forbidden land.

Dahlman’s reputation soared in the aftermath of the historic discovery, as did his value to Newman. By Spring of 1882, Newman annointed him one of his foremen on his next cattle drive – 20,000 head of cattle and 500 horses from Baker City, Ore., to Newman’s newest ranch in Montana Territory and the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Mining operations stimulated the livestock industry during the 1860s in the Pacific Northwest. Overproduction, however, ushered in a market depression that lasted from 1872 to the close of the decade. Fortunes changed dramatically at the dawn of the 1880s when new markets emerged from cattle ranchers in Montana Territory, Wyoming Territory, and Nebraska who sought to stock their ranges. By June 1882, Portland’s Morning Oregonian estimated that 100,000 head of cattle alone had already passed through Boise City, Idaho, located on the southernmost of two major trails eastward. The tally surely included Newman’s crew, which arrived in Baker City in April after an arduous journey. The outfit included Newman, his secretary, S.W. Russell, Dahlman, and 40 cowhands. They first traveled 160 miles by stagecoach to Sidney, where they then boarded a Union Pacific Railroad train to Kelton, Utah Territory. In Kelton, the cowhands again traveled by stage, departing in groups of seven once a day.

Newman, Russell, and Dahlman left Kelton shortly afterward in a lumber wagon loaded with more than a ton of mail. An encounter with muddy roads soon impeded their travel. Dahlman later recalled how every few miles the threesome “had to get out and push.” The whole time Dahlman never took his eyes off a shoebox wrapped in heavy twine. Newman placed the shoebox in Dahlman’s protective care. Inside the box, and unbeknownst to anyone outside the threesome, sat the means to purchase the livestock and supplies in Oregon – somewhere between “$200,000 and $300,000” in cash.

Despite the hardships, Newman’s outfit and irreplaceable shoebox reached Baker City on April 15. The cowboys divided the purchased cattle into smaller herds of 3,000 before hitting the trail, although accounts vary as to whether they started with 20,000 or 15,000 head of cattle. Dahlman remembered taking immediate charge of eight drovers, a cook, and a wrangler, as well as 2,800 head of cattle and “quite a little bunch of horses.”

Initially, Dahlman’s crew headed for Nebraska until a courier warned of prairie fires ahead. The Texas-born leader decided to change course and drive the herd to Montana. By then, his men had already traversed narrow, mountainous terrain, and even spent three days and three nights weaving the herd through dense pockets of pine trees. They eventually crossed into Montana, and drove the cattle up the Big Powder River to Newman’s ranch on Cache Creek. The outfit ended its epic drive Oct. 15 – six months to the day after arriving in Baker City.

“When all the herds were counted, Mr. Russell found mine ranked first,” Dahlman proudly recalled 40 years later. Newman presented Dahlman afterward with a new pearl-handled gun, knife, and holster – gifts worthy of his leadership, grit, and heroics.

A gift worthy of a legend. And a legend worthy of greater deeds.

Shortly afterward, Dahlman abruptly left the range in search of other employment. He served as a brand inspector for the Wyoming Stock Association in Valentine, and then later as the Dawes County sheriff before being elected in 1885 to the first of two terms as mayor of Chadron. Politics suited Dahlman. He became a friend and key fundraiser for Congressman William Jennings Bryan in his three unsuccessful bids for the White House, as well as a state delegate in 1892 and 1896 at the Democratic National Convention. In 1899, Dahlman went to work for the Union Stock Yards Company of Omaha.

Then, in 1906, Omaha’s voters elected Dahlman as mayor. He would eventually serve a total of 20 years as the city’s mayor under the moniker “Cowboy Jim,” riding his reputation as a noted Nebraska cowboy to an astonishing eight elected terms. He earned a reputation as the “wettest mayor in America” after the number of Omaha saloons doubled during his first decade in office. Dahlman never shied away from anything while in public office, including his open connection to Omaha crime boss Tom Dennison – a man who found the old drover tolerant of his ward’s preferred vices of gambling, alcohol, and prostitution.

Only death extinguished Dahlman’s political grip on Omaha. He died Jan. 21, 1930, at age 73 after a stroke at a Missouri resort. His death cast a long shadow over Omaha, but not over his reputation as a political firebrand. By then, his political career overshadowed even his extraordinary deeds as a cowboy.

One newspaper reporter even noted with a touch of hope how someday, “the romance of his early life may be hammered into copy and then placed in cold type” – the final step of printing history, the once-hot lead from a Linotype applying ink to a page. “He did not know the meaning of the word fear.”

Dahlman’s story did indeed begin long before his election as mayor of Omaha in 1906, back when the buffalo still roamed the Great Plains in vast herds and heroes emerged from distant cattle ranches.

Today, that “cold type” might be best told by the shifting sand dunes of Nebraska’s legendary Sandhills.

 

Putting on a parade for Roosevelt

Crowds gathered on the eve of President Theodore Roosevelt’s second inauguration on March 4, 1905, in Washington, D.C., to the see authentic Western cowboys dressed in their colorful regalia. The cowboys didn’t disappoint.

One old cowpuncher shocked spectators when he bolted down Pennsylvania Avenue aboard his horse, twirled his rope over his head, and lassoed an unsuspecting lad on a curb. The boy shrieked, and the crowd cheered.

The cowboy’s name was James Charles Dahlman – an old acquaintance of the president from his ranch days in the Dakota Territory.

“When Theodore Roosevelt was a cowpuncher on the Little Missouri River and rode the range in Montana and South Dakota, he and ‘Ol’ Jim’ first became acquainted,” wrote Fred Carey in a posthumous biography on Dahlman, Mayor Jim: An Epic of the West.

Seth Bullock, a South Dakotan and close friend of Roosevelt, traveled to Omaha to ask Dahlman if he could help recruit cowboys for the inaugural parade. Some 60 former cowboys eventually made the trip east and participated the historic parade much to the joy of Roosevelt, who romanticized the American West as a child.

Chiricahua Apache warrior Geronimo and Comanche Chief Quanah Parker were among six American Indian chiefs who were also invited to attend. Together, the cowboys and Indians paid homage to Roosevelt’s vision of the Wild West.

“We had the time of our lives,” Dahlman said. “We were well entertained. We visited the White House, paid our respects to Teddy and naturally were the talk of Washington.”