Almost every account of Kearney's origins begins with the location of the junction point of the Burlington & Missouri railroad with the Union Pacific railroad in Section One, Township Eight, Range Sixteen on the 11th of April, 1871.¹ Following a late snow storm, D. N. Smith and Asbury Collins, with Moses Sydenham, their host and guide, had left Fort Kearney and crossed the Platte River to accomplish this end.  Both Smith and Collins were superannuate ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church² and both were acting as agents of the Burlington and Missouri. David Smith had served the railroad for several years.³  A letter in the B & M files for 1870 described Smith as "the old and efficient land explorer of this company" and, in a second letter, the writer said: "a sharper, shrewder man than this same strong ex-Methodist minister D.N. Smith I have not met in the West ...."⁴  Smith had been active in Iowa and Nebraska, locating town sites and acquiring land for the B & M.  One of his more recent ventures had been the location of the site for Lowell.⁵  Perhaps it was in Iowa that Asbury Collins became an "old time friend and associate."⁶ The Collins family was living in Chariton, Iowa in the spring of 1871.⁷ Asbury Collins, troubled by the health problems that led him to give up the active ministry, had decided to move west to take up a homestead.  The prospects for the B & M junction point with the Union Pacific apparently brought him to this location.⁸

The Rev. Asbury Collins First postmaster of Kearney Junction, Feb. 9-Oct. 29, 1872.  Post office located in Junction House.	D. N. Smith Agent for Townsite Company for B&M Railway, located junction point, April 11, 1871.

        What is not clear from these sources is that Section One was the first choice for a junction point.  An early source states that the intended choice was Section Two, adjoining Section One on the west, and the decision to locate the town site on Section One was not made until the spring of 1872.⁹  The latter part of this statement, and perhaps the whole, is inconsistent with the known evidence. The town site for Kearney Junction was surveyed in the summer of 1871 and a plat recorded in October.¹⁰  On the basis of past precedent and contemporary appearances, however, the choice was Section Two.

        Whether it be in Iowa or, later, in Nebraska, the B & M railroad and the land companies associated with it, had engaged actively in locating town sites.  In Nebraska, with the population along its route sparse or non-existent, it became imperative for the railroad to create traffic by fostering farm and town settlement."¹¹  Town settlement indeed often preceded the settlement of the countryside.  The B & M generally left town site development to the land associations and companies affiliated with the railroad.  These companies were often organized by officials of, and investors in, the railroad.  Two such groups were the Eastern Land Association, incorporated in 1870,and the South Platte Land Company organized in 1873.  The latter company superseded the former in Nebraska."¹²  With the privileged position of insiders, the land companies could anticipate and control the location of town sites and take advantage of the opportunities for profit offered as the railroad built west.

        A pattern for B & M town site development became apparent both in Iowa and Nebraska.  The land or town site company would employ four men to take up quarter section claims on a government section and build a four room house in the center of the section with one room lying within each quarter.  Once the men had proved up on their claims, the land company would buy the land from them.  This is what was done here in Section Two.

     Two men, brothers of D. N. Smith, filed declarations of intent to claim quarters of the north half of Section Two on April 21st, 1871. ¹³  The federal land office records show George E. and James A. Smith paying for pre-emption claims to the NE ¼ and NW ¼ respectively the 21st of November, 1871. ¹⁴  George Smith paid $376.75 for his claim and James Smith paid $380.15 for his quarter.  Four days later, they sold their land to David N. Smith for $500 each.¹⁵

        Two other men will file similar declarations on the south half of Section Two a few days later.  The third settler was Daniel Rowan.  He took up the south west quarter, using agricultural college scrip, February 14, 1872 and sold it to a B & M representative March 1, 1872.¹⁶  The latter "owner" transferred the property to the Eastern Land Association March 5, 1873.¹⁷  The last of the four settlers was John W. Wright.  He filed a formal application for a homestead claim to the south east quarter with the land office January 18, 1872.¹⁸  This claim was canceled in mid - 1873. Frank R. Woods filed a pre-emption claim to the same quarter on the third of July, 1873 ¹⁹ and was granted letters patent the 27th of January, 1874.²⁰  Woods certainly had filed a declaration of intent earlier and is known to have been living on the claim in August of 1872. ²¹ He also paid personal taxes in Buffalo County for 1872.²²

        Whatever the circumstances surrounding the actual transfer of the land from public to private hands, it is clear from the many references that four men made declarations for the four quarter sections in Section Two and were living in a building erected at the center of the section by early May of 1871.  Based on the past practice of the B & M, Section Two, a government section, was to be the town site and the junction point.  Why it did not become either one is not at all clear.

         The situation may have been complicated by the fact that the B & M did not have a land grant in the area and the Union Pacific did. Members of the Eastern Land Association began buying up land in the general area shortly after David N. Smith's April visit.  Smith, himself, purchased Section One and a part of Section Eleven from the Union Pacific May 3, 1871. ²³ Eleven months later, he will sell these properties to the Eastern Land Association. ²⁴ Smith was certainly acting as an agent for the association at all times.

         The possibility exists that Smith had targeted Section Two as the junction point in order to disguise his real intent from the Union Pacific until the purchase of Section One was made. ²⁵ Subsequent events seem to bear this out.  The survey of Section One as the town site was carried out in the summer of 1871 and the plat filed in the fall.  Settlement on the town site will commence afterward, particularly in 1872, although the first town lot sales are not made until after the B & M completed its track to Kearney Junction September 1, 1872.  The Union Pacific, however, will refuse to stop at Kearney Junction, continuing on to the Junction House in Section Two. ²⁶ The impasse between the two railroads persists until the B & M sells one half of the town lots in Kearney Junction to the Union Pacific in mid-September1872. ²⁷

        Uncertainty prevails when an effort is made to identify the first habitation on Section Two or Section One.  The Martin Slatterys are said to have lived in a section house five miles west of Kearney Station on the Union Pacific track. ²⁸ They occupied the house from the fall of 1866, when it was built, until the spring of 1867.  Mrs. Slattery described the house as,

made of boards placed upright, on end, and when completed it contained three rooms below and a loft above for the hired men.  The whole building, except door, windows, and roof was enclosed by blocks of sod, and was called a sod house.

 An account of the D. N. Smith site location party of April, 1871, appearing in the Kearney Times July 20, 1876, refers to the "old brown section house" as the only habitation in view.

        A building was situated in the center of Section Two by late April or early May of 1871.  We know it was there May 11th when Asbury Collins, his wife Louisa, and their two sons and daughter arrived from Chariton, Iowa.²⁹  That evening, the Collins' and the four claim holders sat down to tea served on tin cups and plates with a box covered by newspaper as the table.³⁰

        Nine persons were too many for the building which will have various names and uses, but is best known as the Junction House.  The original building is described in one source as a shack fifteen feet by fifteen feet.³¹  The congestion was relieved when a lean-to addition of the same size as the original structure was completed for the use of the Collins'.

        Robert Harvey, a surveyor checking Union Pacific land grant properties for the state, makes no mention of a building on Section Two when he passed through the area in May of 1871.  Returning in June, he saw a house on Section Two, south of the railroad. ³³ It was a frame house, two stories, but was not finished.  The partitions were in place but the door was not hung.  It was the only house in sight.  He did not refer to any residents, only observing: "There was no women in sight."

        Harvey had seen a building in May, but on Section One and north of the tracks. It was a board shack, the boards placed horizontally and nailed to the posts.  The roof was low and sloped to the north, the door was located in the east end.  A carriage stood outside and a team of horses was picketed nearby.  Inside the shack, he found D. N. Smith stretched out on a bed reading a magazine.  The shack is not mentioned in his June notes.
 
        The Smith-Collins-Junction House-Hotel does appear to have metamorphosed into a two-story structure and become a post office, a sometime hotel, and, perhaps a flag station for the Union Pacific.  A visitor in the first part of July, 1871 stayed there two days and reported that Mr.Collins and son, and two of the Mr. Smiths,³⁴

have built a two-story frame house thirty-two feet square, in which Mr. Collins lives and furnishes boarding and lodging for the Smiths, who are bachelors, and for new-comers, at $4.50 a week.

        A story in the Kearney Enterprise for May 30, 1889 also says a two story frame house thirty-two feet square was erected a few rods south of the railroad track and "named the Junction House."

        The Collins were living in the Junction House when the Methodist Church had its beginnings in October of 1871.  On one occasion Mrs. Collins said this event occurred in her home, ³⁵ and on another she placed it in the Junction House. ³⁶ The Reverend A. G. White, who presided at the meeting, said there were thirty persons present in the parlor of the hotel. ³⁷ "Here," he wrote, "I organized a class of five and connected it with the Grand Island mission."  Reverend White commented upon the lavish dinner served this day, consisting of beef, chicken, buffalo, goose, duck, prairie chicken and other comestibles.

        Well before this event took place, Collins had filed a declaration on a claim of his own and possibly begun construction of a house.  He will use agricultural college scrip to take up the north west quarter of Section Twelve, Township Eight, Range Sixteen, adjoining Section One on the south, the 6th of January, 1872. ³⁸ The same day he filed an application for a homestead on lots 1, 2, 3 and 4 of Section Twelve, consisting of 91.60 acres. ³⁹ The Hub for June 7, 1948 says a seven room house was built on his property and occupied in July of 1871.  The latter date is certainly in error; July of 1872, given in another source, is nearer to correct.⁴⁰

        Further information about the Junction House is gleaned from Moses Sydenham's report in The Central Star, February 2, 1872.  He relates the story of his horseback ride across the river to an entertainment at the large hotel in Kearney Junction.  Judge Collins, W. W. Patterson, and the Smith brothers were among those present.  School District No. 7 was also organized at the Junction House March 8, 1872. ⁴¹ Some time in the spring of 1872, the Calhouns arrived at Kearney Junction and stopped at the "Collins or Junction House" at Ninth Avenue and Railroad Street. ⁴² One of their girls stayed with the Collins, then living in their house near the Platte River, while going to school later that year.

        Without locating it, L. B. Cunningham, who came to Kearney Junction in August of 1872, reported that he met Asbury and Louisa Collins at the Junction House. ⁴³ Collins had been named postmaster February 9, 1872 at which time it was probably possible to discontinue the practice of riding across the river to Fort Kearney to pick up the mail and make use of the Union Pacific "catch" system instead. ⁴⁴ Collins turned the postmastership over to George E. Smith October 29, 1872. Smith seemingly had been serving as an assistant for some time.  By that time the Collins were surely living in their new home and the Junction House may have been moved into town.

    Andreas,  History of Nebraska ,1882; Bassett, S.C.,  History of Buffalo County , v. 1, 1916;  Come Back Letters, 1923; Overton,R.C.,  Burlington West ,1941;  Where Buffalo Roamed, 1967; Kearney Times; Kearney Daily Hub; Kearney Enterprise; Buffalo County Deed Books; United States General Land Office Tract Books; Record of Appointment of Postmasters, National Archives, Mf841:77; D. K.Flickinger. "A Trip to Nebraska and Elsewhere,"  The Religious Telescope, July 26,1871, and Ella D. Hostetler, "The First Inhabitants," DAR Magazine.

      1 Bassett, 184; Andreas, 421; KDH, September 12, 1923, and June 7, 1948;KE, May 30 1889 Kearney Times, Julv 20, 1876 adds W.W. Patterson and a Mr Witse to party. It also gives the date as April 8.
      2 Andreas, 421-2; KDH March 1890, A Collins obituary; and June 7, 1948, citing Central Advocate, November, 1871.
      3 Overton, 233, 266, 287, 305; Andreas 1023; Bassett, l99.
      4 Overton 305.
      5 Andreas, 1023.
      6 Andreas, 421.
      7 KDH, March 10, 1890.
      8 Andreas, 421; KDH, March 10 1890 and June 7, 1948.
      9 Andreas, 421-2
    10 Bassett, 185; Deed Bk A, 12-13.
    11 Overton, 286.
    12 Overton, 286, 288-9 Deed Bk B, 480. 
    13 Bassett, 184; KE, May 30, 1889; KDH, September12, 1923. 
    14 Tract Bk 116, p 73; Deed Bk A, 110, 109. 
    15 Deed Bk A. 17, 18. 16 Tract Bk 116, p 73; Deed Bk A, 333-4.
    17 Deed Bk A, 334.
    18 Tract Bk 116, p 73.
    19 Tract Bk 116, p 73.
    20 Deed Bk A, 474.
    21 Bassett,198.
    22 Bassett, 187.
    23 Deed Bk A, 8-10.
    24 Deed Bk A, 86-7.
    25 See e.g. Bassett, 199.
    26 Bassett,185; Mrs H.H. Achey, Come Back Letter, 1923.
    27 Deed Bk B, 357-9.
    28 Hostetler.
    29 Andreas, 421-2; KDH, March 10, 1890,October 15, 1921, March 19, 1935,and June 7, 1948; K Times, July 20, 1876.
    30 Andreas, 421-2.
    31 KDH, June7, 1948.
    32 Andreas, 421-2; KDH, October15, 1921 and March 19, 1935.
    33 KDH, September12, 1923.
    34 Flickinger, July 26, 1871.
    35 KDH March 19, 1935.
    36 KDH, September12, 1923.
    37 KDH, June 7, 1948, an excerpt from the Central Advocate, November,1871.
    38 Tract Bk 116, p 76. 
    39 Tract Bk 116, p76; Deed Bk D, 351; Deed BkG, 6, letters patent granted June 4. 1877.
    40 Andreas, 421-2.
    41 Bassett,195; KDH, September 12, 1935.
    42 Where BuffaloRoamed, 158-9.
    43 Bassett,198.
    44 Rec. of Appt. of Postmasters; KE December22, 1889.

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