Nebraska's Haunted Hollow

This story, a fan favorite, originally appeared in the September/October 2018 issue of Nebraska Life.

St. Deroin is pretty busy for a ghost town. The former ferryboat hub in Nemaha County is part of Indian Cave State Park. Nearly 300,000 spirited adventurers visited the 3,052-acre park in 2017. Not too shabby for a town that peaked with a population of 300 in the 1870s.

Hikers, mountain bikers and backpackers explore 22 miles of scenic park trails. Equestrians bed down near their mounts at the horse camp after trotting along 12 trail miles of their own. Ash Grove and Hackberry Hollow campgrounds envelop recreational vehicles with scenery and shade. Campers preferring to rough it in tents pound their stakes at locations across the park. Birders flock here to glimpse winged things ranging from diminutive cerulean warblers to pileated woodpeckers with wingspans approaching 30 inches. Archers sling arrows at the archery range. All of this activity hasn’t scared off St. Deroin’s ghosts.

Joseph Deroin was the son of a French trapper and an Otoe woman. Similar unions produced children rejected by both cultures. The 138,000-acre Nemaha Half-Breed Reservation was established in 1830 for this homeless population. Deroin claimed 320 acres in 1842 and built a trading post to serve the reservation’s 230 mixed-heritage residents. The community of homes and businesses that sprung up around Deroin’s store was founded as St. Deroin in 1854.

Deroin, who was living with three wives by this time, was known up and down the river for his hot temper. He was bullishly attempting to collect a $6 payment for a hog when settler James Biddow shot him dead in 1858. The killer was acquitted. Visitors gathered around evening campfires today repeat the tale of Deroin being buried atop his favorite horse. Some report hearing the clopping of hooves near St. Deroin Cemetery.

A.J. Ritter was laid to rest there, too, but not before losing an arm while “fishing” with dynamite on the Missouri River. The detached appendage was supposedly buried west of town. Ritter was interred at St. Deroin Cemetery years later. Park staff perpetuate the legend of Ritter’s ghost rising in search of his missing limb on moonless nights.

The Missouri River inundated St. Deroin in 1911. The town dried up four years later when the shifty river channel left its ferry landing high and dry. The cemetery and the St. Deroin School that was moved brick by brick to higher ground are all that remain of the original community. A rebuilt general store overlooks the river that swept St. Deroin away.

That is where Mike Wilhelm makes whisk brooms and other sweeping tools during living history weekends. How did the Verdon resident living near Sardine Creek end up making brooms along the Missouri River?

“You know how mothers are, right? My mom told me the park needed a broom maker and that I should go do that,” Wilhelm said. “That was 18 years ago. Now I only have to drive 15 miles to meet visitors from around the world.”

“How long does it take to make a broom?” a visitor from Omaha asks. “Usually about an hour, but it depends on how many questions you ask,” Wilhelm said jokingly while looking up from his 1879 broom winder. Growing his own broom corn didn’t work out. Wild turkeys ate it to the ground.

Other animals lurk nearby. Wilhelm was cutting twine on the store’s front porch when a bobcat slinked across his view. “That thing was about 30 pounds and its tail twitched every time someone said ‘bobcat,’ ” Wilhelm said. “She was so tame that people were pulling ticks off it.”

Not everyone appreciated the wild animal’s close proximity. The park’s soap maker discovered the feline sleeping behind her kettle one morning. “She jumped over the counter, and the cat went out the window. I’m not sure who was more scared,” Wilhelm said. 

Joan Keighley knows that 20 pounds of lard, 41 ounces of lye and 6 gallons of water make 120 bars of lye soap. A visiting chemist who listened to the soaper’s spiel declared the product 99.6 percent pure. Customers say the soap relieves the itch from poison ivy and dampens discomfort from sunburn.

“One guy swears by it as the best catfish bait ever, and it works on dirty-mouth children, too,” Keighley said while in full pioneer character.

Sparks fly and the clanging of iron erupts from the blacksmith’s shop as Keighley’s soap cools. She hollers to her blacksmith husband to “knock it off.”

“I don’t get paid enough to put up with this. Oh, wait, I’m a volunteer,” Wayne Keighley said with a mischievous smile peeking through his grizzled gray beard. He pulls hammers and wedges from his tool crate. Then he stokes his coal forge to 4,000 degrees.

Iron cools from orange to red and then black while shaping hot dog sticks and fire pokers. His collection of anvils range from 44 to 182 pounds. “I can still pick up the big one, but I’d pay a price the next day,” said the fit 63-year-old, who attributes his good health to the custodial job he works at a Kansas high school. “Three-story building with a basement. I do stairs all day,” he said. Visitors step back as the blacksmith shares the story of a black rat snake named Hilda that once dropped unexpectedly from the shop’s ceiling. Goosebumps rise as he tells tales of ghostly apparitions.

There was the park employee who saw a man “in old timey clothes” standing next to a gate. She took her eyes off him, and he was gone when she looked back. The woman was convinced it was the same man she later recognized in a historic photo of the old St. Deroin livery stable.

“The man in that picture was Charlie Noyes. He had been dead more than 100 years by then,” Wayne Keighley said.

His favorite story is the legend of an odd light appearing in the park at night. The story goes that the light mysteriously moved across the road as a park superintendent investigated. The light appeared across the river moments later. “River pirates!” Keighley exclaimed with a slam of his sledgehammer. “More than likely they killed this lady’s husband, dumped the body in the river and stole his goods. Her ghost sits by the cave with a lantern while waiting for her murdered husband to come home.”

Indian Cave State Park is named for the large sandstone cavern at the southeast corner of the property. The walls are adorned with ancient petroglyphs that some experts say were carved 1,500 years ago. Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark noted the cave in their journals in 1804. They didn’t carve their names in the stone but more recent visitors have. A boardwalk provides prime viewing while protecting 15 intact carvings including geometric figures, a fish-like creature walking on two legs and depictions of ponies.

Lewis and Clark would have recognized the weaponry of the Pioneer Longrifles gun club. There are flintlock and muzzleloading rifles, antler-handled knives and double-edged hatchets. The club’s mission of embracing the pre-1840 mountain man culture includes women.

Ann Claymiller’s .36 caliber muzzleloader has been handed down to four different members since the club began in 1972. One day she will hand it down to a young new member. Hundreds of park visitors have shot the antique firearm at the club’s range about a mile from Indian Cave. “We show people how things were done in the old days,” Claymiller said. “Children often ask why pioneers hunted instead of just going to the grocery store. People living here 150 years ago were shooting for survival, not for fun.”

Shayne Siddens is one of the club’s better shots. He proves it by displaying the nine playing cards he has sliced in half through each card’s thin edge during competition shoots. Other challenges include shooting eggs at 100 yards or knocking jellybeans off the ends of toothpicks. Siddens, the club’s range officer, looks the part of sharpshooter in buckskin pants, a work shirt, felt hat, hand-tooled leather belt, powder horn and beaded hat band.

He hollers “cease fire” when curious whitetail deer cross the firing line. One time he stopped the action as a dachshund chased a flock of turkeys across the range. His .75 caliber rifle was built in 1863. The 13-pounder was a favorite of longtime member Cheryl McDowell, who volunteered as a blacksmith at the state park.

“She knew more about Indian Cave State Park than most people who ever worked here,” Claymiller said. “The little bridge in St. Deroin is named for her.”

Gun club members loaded up to fire a memorial shot to McDowell after she died in October 2015.

“We’ve got this photo of us all lined up to fire, and there is a shadow where nobody was even standing,” Claymiller said. “We know Cheryl was here with us in this hidden treasure of a park that she loved so much.”

Cheryl Allen hears some interesting questions while working the front gate at Indian Cave State Park. Callers, “not from the Midwest,” according to Allen, ask if Indians still live in the cave. Whether bears inhabit the park is another popular query. One thing is not in question: Indian Cave State Park is a mecca for outdoor trail adventurers.

Two-wheeled travelers share space with hikers while catching air, grabbing tight turns and slicing through hardwood forest on 22 miles of twisting trails named North Ridge, East Ridge, Rock Bluff and Hardwood. Adirondack shelters every few miles provide explorers with places to recharge. Panama resident Jim Craig has been exploring Indian Cave State Park since 1993.

“Even when park roads are busy, there is plenty of room on the trails,” Craig said. “You’ll be riding along a ridge and then it opens up and man, you see the Missouri River, and to me it looks like I can see all the way to Kentucky.” He loves exploring when autumn leaves are changing color. One memorable experience was black and white.

“I was pedaling along and had to stop for this skunk plopped down on the trail. We had a meeting of the minds,” Craig said. “I finally caved and turned around since the wind was blowing my way. Wildlife and scenery are why Indian Cave State Park is the cream of the crop for Nebraska mountain biking.”

Horseback riding on the park’s 12 miles of equine trails is another popular pursuit. Dusty, Dynamite, Lucky, Wildfire and Doc are some of the steeds stabled at Indian Cave State Park’s horse barn. Jade Hill brushes, saddles and feeds the animals before visitors arrive. She was in the lead and riding Lucky when something slithering on the trail gave her a shiver.

“We came around this bend and there was a big black snake about 4 feet long,” Hill said. “Lucky is a 1,000-pound fraidy cat that is scared of everything, but he didn’t freak out. If the lead horse doesn’t react, the other animals usually won’t either.”

Fellow wrangler Sara Wertenberger admits to preferring the company of horses over people some days during the park’s May through October trail ride season. She began showing horses at age 8 and enjoys showing visitors Indian Cave State Park via horseback.

“Being just a little above the trail on a horse gives people a totally different view than if they are walking,” Wertenberger said. “Getting off the main roads and onto the trails is the best way to see this impressive park.”  

No question about it.