Today the Kearney canal flows placidly through the countryside, providing water to ninety-three farmers and producing supplemental power in the irrigation season.  The three story building has lost its gabled upper floor.  The tower has been truncated.  Fifty feet of the chimney has been removed.  It was not always so.  The canal has had a turbulent and checkered past, encapsulating the dreams of its boosters and revealing the too frequent failure of those dreams to be realized.  Throughout, the canal has survived.

          Two possible conclusions about the canal's origins have been suggested by this review of the story.  First, that the original proposals were for the development of water power, with irrigation being of secondary, even incidental, importance.  Second, that the production of electric power was not a factor before 1887.  In addition, we can see that from the beginning the project would be troubled by the erratic flow of the Platte river.  The many hazards and uncertainties encountered over the years is to be seen in the five changes of ownership between 1882 and 1908.

         When the idea of such a canal was first formed is unknown, some would say as early as 1873.  There is no clear evidence, however, that a need for a canal was recognized until 1875.  The hard times and grasshoppers of the mid-seventies may have inspired the appearance of supporters before the Buffalo County Commissioners in January of 1876.  Eight-seven persons signed a petition asking for a survey of a canal from a point about twelve miles west of Kearney eastwards to the bluffs north of the city.  An estimate of the practicability and cost of the canal was to he made by the surveyor.  Simon Murphy, the county surveyor, was given the task.  His report, presented in February of 1876, estimated that a canal twelve feet wide on the bottom and three feet deep would cost $57,660 for diversion dam, flumes and excavation.  The purpose of the canal does not appear in the petition or the survey report.
    
          Included in the Commissioner's minutes is a letter from an Omaha attorney, J. C. Cowin, which clarifies this question.  Cowin had been asked if it would be legal for Buffalo and Hall Counties to vote bonds "for the purpose of digging a canal from the Platte River to Wood River to make Wood River a good stream for mills and other manufacturing purposes." Grand Island attorneys doubted that Hall County citizens could be bonded for a canal wholly within Buffalo County.  Cowin found the bonding proposal legal, but demolished the project by observing that the scheme, which appeared to be nothing more than a mill race to propel mills, manufactories, or machinery, was not an internal improvement under Nebraska law.  No county, he said, could bond itself to aid in the construction of mills or manufactories.
 
          Irrigation had not been forgotten entirely in these discussions.  A Buffalo County resident, George Milbourn, appeared before the county commissioners in late January to recommend that the canal head near Cozad.  This route he believed would be of greater benefit for irrigation and would induce farmers to donate work toward excavation.
 
          Kearney supporters did not drop their efforts after this set back.  State Senator Elisha C. Calkins of Kearney wrote, introduced and secured passage of legislation in 1877 giving corporations organized "for the purpose of constructing and operating canals for irrigation, or water-power purposes, or both," the status of internal improvements, and the right of eminent domain.  The latter provision, necessary in itself, may also have reflected some opposition to the canal by farmers along its route.  There is no further news of the canal until 1881.

          The first Board of Trade in Kearney, organized April 2, 1881, took up the scheme to build a canal from the Platte river to the hills north of the city at its second meeting on the 7th of April.  The canal was to supply water for the city and to provide power for milling and other manufacturing purposes.  The executive committee of the Board of Trade hired an engineer to make another survey and cost estimate and, themselves, began to consider how to organize and raise money for the development.
 
          Indications of vigorous disputes appear in the records that remain.  Probably as a result of these, it was decided the canal should have a capacity adequate to provide water for power, fire protection, irrigation along the line of the canal and, from the wasteway, "for a number of miles" below the city.  Other controversy centered around the method to be followed in building the canal.  One group favored having the city finance and operate the project, a second group believed a private company should be organized to build the canal with aid from the city, and a third faction wanted a private company to contract with the city to do the job.  The engineer's estimate of construction costs were much lower than that of 1876: a total of $21,448 for right of way, dam, bridges, flumes, and excavation.  Other estimates, however, ranged as high as $76,000.
  
       Of the three plans for development, it was that proposing a joint effort by the city and a private company that prevailed.  The Kearney Canal and Water Supply Company was incorporated March 28, 1882, its capital stock of $100,000 to be divided into 5,000 shares of twenty dollars each.  Two-thirds of the capital stock had to be subscribed and twenty-five per cent paid in for the corporation to function.  E.C. Calkins recalls that was accomplished and the corporation was organized May 5, 1882.  The company was to build, operate and maintain a canal or canals for irrigation and water power purposes.  The primacy of the latter in the minds of the developers is to be seen in the fact that no permanent water rights for irrigation were to be sold, and in the actual paucity of irrigation development later.
 
          An election held the 26th of June approved by a three to one margin the authorization of $30,000 bonds by the city to help finance the canal.  The initial payment would be made after one mile was built and tested; later payments were to be made at the rate of $2,000 for each mile completed.  Five thousand dollars was to be withheld until the canal was wholly complete.  An engineer was employed, further surveys made, and many bids taken for construction.  Colonel Thomas Price of Bennett received a contract to excavate fourteen miles of the canal at nine cents a cubic yard the 6th of September.  Construction commenced four days afterward.  The canal was to be thirty feet wide on the bottom with one to one slopes and a fall of two feet for the first mile.  Subsequent miles were to be twenty-one feet on the bottom and to have a fall of one and one-half feet per mile.
 
          Accounts vary as to the extent of work done in the fall of 1882.  It appears that the wing dam, headgates, waste gates, and two miles of the canal were done by November.  Additional miles may have been completed before the test required for the city bonds was made December 15, 1882.  The test results showed water running two and one-half feet deep on the thirty foot bottom and four feet deep on the twenty - one foot bottom.  Winter stopped most work on the canal.
     
          Excavation work was resumed in the spring of 1883 with twelve miles completed by the summer, when available funds were exhausted.  Apparently no money was received from the city bonds until the late fall.  The scarcity of cash in the spring may have influenced the April decision to replace the flumes at Mud Creek and Deep Creek with banks creating small reservoirs.  These banks were begun in the fall and completed in the spring of 1884.  There seems to have been some experimentation with irrigation on the Barney place west of Deep Creek and, perhaps, at another farm in 1883.
   
           It is not certain that the canal can be considered complete as of 1884.  That claim was made years afterward, but there is conflicting evidence.  Elisha Calkins testified that the original company had spent "upwards of $33,000" with $20,000 coming from the stockholders and the remainder from the city bonds.  Still, the Kearney New Era of August 1, 1885, states that $46,000 had been spent on the canal prior to George W. Frank, Sr.'s purchase of control in late July of 1885.  The paper also said another $6,000 would be needed to finish the canal and thousands more for mill seats and the tail race.  George W. Frank had acquired four-fifths of the stock of the Kearney Canal and Water Supply Company.  He and other capitalists were expected to carry the project through to completion and to make of Kearney a thriving manufacturing city.  It is known that new surveys were made and further work begun on the canal in the fall of 1885.

         Work was done on the canal to the reservoir at the edge of town, the New Era reported in January of 1886, and a contract let to drive pilings in the reservoir embankment to strengthen it.  Too, construction of the tail race was to begin soon.  Unfortunately, the following month the bank at Deep Creek - and possibly Mud Creek also - washed out. The repair work was done and the canal declared complete by mid-June, although the tail race was not finished.  By the second week of August the reservoirs were full and water running over the wasteway - only to encounter disaster.  The framework of the race weir washed out and a cut had to be made in the canal bank to divert water, causing some damage to farm lands.  When Juan Boyle held his gala opening at the pavilion and boat docks at Lake View the 14th of August, the water level in the lake had lowered and a new wasteway was being built.  The repairs were complete and water safely spilling out of the reservoir by the 25th of August.
  
          There is no record of any substantial amount of irrigation from the canal in 1885 or 1886, although there may have been further testing.  The question of the kind of use to which the water power was to be put is more complex.  Good reason exists to doubt that the production of electric power was not a factor prior to the latter part of 1886, if then, and surely not at an earlier date.

         The progress of technology had made the production of direct current possible by the early 1880s, London having established the first public power station in 1882.  The older carbon are lamps and the newer incandescent carbon filament lights were available.  Alternating current would not even be demonstrated until 1888.  Kearney probably received its first electric lights with the establishment of the Pilcher Electric Light Company in 1885.  The company provided at least some street lights before it, or its successor, expired perhaps late in 1886.  A horse drawn street railway was also chartered late in 1886.

         Nowhere in the contemporary sources are the words electricity, generator, or dynamo mentioned in connection with water power before 1887. References to the development of electric power from the canal in 1886 do appear in testimony given in 1911 and 1913. In some accounts, one or two water wheels or turbines are said to have been installed and a small power house erected in the fall of 1886. If so, it is probable this wheel (or wheels) was to produce not electric power, but conventional water power. Frank in the latter part of October was still speaking of selling water rights to eastern firms that might locate in Kearney. They wanted him to give away the water rights, he complained.
 
          Other than seeking to lure industry to Kearney, Frank's main effort in 1886 to make the canal company profitable was through offering to provide the city a water works system.  This proposal, made to the city council in March, led to a June election to approve a levy for water works, and a city ordinance agreeing to the arrangement in July, providing Frank accepted certain conditions.  Frank did not accept these and his second proposal met competition from other firms.  A Pennsylvania company ultimately obtained the franchise.  Frank also encountered other difficulties with the council in trying to secure final payment on the 1882 city bonds.  It was May of 1887 before the council approved an agreement to release $5,000 in bonds in exchange for $10,000 in further expenditure on the canal.  The one bright spot was the construction of an ice house in November to make use of the water in Lake View reservoir.

Proofread 8-20-2005

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