The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-08-19
ROMANCE OF A NEBRASKA o1TY.
Rapid Growth OF the Capital and the
Real Estate Boom That Followed.
A. S. Cody in New York Independent

| large. bub L6dQVlIle ndQ no SLdbS unlVer-
sity, no magnificent postofice building
and court house, no architectural phenom-
! ena, such as a beautiful white stone state
insane asylum of size and elegance that
any state OF any nation might well be
! proud, and penitentiary equally impos-
| ing. Many men went To Leadville, but
surely you could not have found there the
| scholars of state, as you might have
| found at Lincoln. Leadville didn't get
| five railroads all in a lump. Railroads
may fail and pass into the hands of re-
ceivers, but railroads are substantial
things, and however badly they pay, there
| they are, fast and solid, and usually they
have to be run, though there was time,
possibly, in the hard times of the 70's,
when the railroads lying around and
about Lincoln were not all run.
Lincoln was, from the first, city to be
proud of. Born, as | have said, full
| iedged as city from the wisdom of the
state, with all the paraphernalia and i'm
pedimenta of cityhood thrice augmented,
| as | have described, it maintained itself
steadily and continuously through all the
| hard times of the 70's; for it was then
| that the finest buildings were put up, and
that settled air of eastern culture was at
| tanned. And all this is true, just as have
| stated it for / am no longer an inhabitant
of Lincoln, and was not born there, and
! it is years since nv nostrils breathed its
| brisk airs. But | saw, or heard from my
OVID father, all that / have described.
| The rest of this romance of a city must
| be devoted to dry statistics-not as to the
number of paupers, insane and criminals,
| the number of students a. the university.
| male and female, and so forth, but to the
| price of city lots; for all the bloom and
| all the tragedy of the fair young city was
in the price of her city lots.
| City lots in good locations started in at
| about $500, were bought for $500 and over
| in the early seventies, and sold for 500
after the crash of IA. Only those who
| were obliged to sell sold. and those who
were not obliged to sell held their
| property at the old figures. But prices
went steadily down for the next seven
years. Land worth $1,000 declined to
| "a, coo in rs, to So, 900 in rs, and sold in
| 80 for $1,000. Each year the city grew
| 1000 inhabitants; it matured and became
more or less rich in and of itself, but it
had little surplus money to put on to prices
| of lots The slow, steady decline forced
| out the poor little by little, and the pros,
porous and wealthy bought, hoping for a
happy day.
At last the happy day came. 1t had
been PROSPEROUS year, and the wheat
and the corn and the oats were excellent.
| The country in general was prosperous.
| Everything was propitious. How it
started nobody knew, but it got into the
air-that happy day. Long and patient
walters recognized it at once They
could not be mistaken, they who had
the happy day to come. They
recognized it when it was only a
breath in the air. They encouraged
it at once by every power within
their reach, They famed the little spark
of boom till it began to blaze. They wrote
to their eastern friends about it, Their
Jealous rivals, the newcomers to the city
who did not hold the land, but wished
they did, saw the spark and offered tC
| buy The old ones sold, and then bought
back and then sold again. Everybody
| heard how prices were going from $500 to
81, 200, and $1,000 to 1900 Young boys
| went down to the real estate Offices and
| bought suburban lots for $500 in the
| morning and sold them the next morning
for $500. Two hundred dollars for a
| mere boy who knew nothing, and
that in a single night Money grew like
Jonah's gourd. People heard about il
and rushed toward the great city of Lin
| coin, Lincoln, said the old ones, was the
| great railroad center of the west Every
| important railroad of the plains passed
through it, 1t must be the great shipping
| center of the whole vast west 1t was
| destined to be like Chicago, the mighty,
1
| Lincoln, which had been growing stead :
| lily at the rate of 900 in year, or even
| 1000 Now 10000 people came at once.
| The railroad trains were crowded. The
| hotels were crowded. Ten thousand
| people must have homes Ten thousand
| people must buy lots to live on and build
| houses TO inhabit They would not come
| and go away again, as they did
| from the mushroom mining towns; for
| Lincoln had its university, its schools, it's
| culture, its improvements, and its insane
asylum and penitentiary If men lost
their wits in the wild race, still they
would stay in Lincoln; and if men went
d 1T and committed crimes, still they
| stayed. LINCOLN was not a place you
could so easily escape from 1t may have
| been uncertain just what these 10, 900 peo-
| pie would do after they had their homes
and had speculatcd. But at any rate
| they had to stay there, and they did.
Prices went madden and madder Then
| they grew cool and cooler. There were
no more buyers and no more sellers
Land, city lots, had doubled, tripled in
value, all the old inhabitants had made
the fortunes, and the city having gained
so per cent in year, values could never
| 60 back again.
There was Father Brighton. He had
| come from Illinois with few hundreds in
| his pocket. In Chicago he had Just missed
| making his fortune, and now he was old
| With his few hundreds he bought
| quarter section of unbroken land on the
edge of the city limits, erected a battened
| barn, in which he housed his family, and
a lean-to shed, in which be housed his
| cattle He made him a garden and
| turned his cows and horses out TO grass.
| When the boom came he sold his quarter
section for city lots-all but fine estate
of ten acres on commanding eminence
in the center of West Lincoln for S75, 900
| The SIS, 900 he invested in mortgages at
10 per cent on the land he had sold and
there he was, in his old age finding the
| fortune he had always missed till now
! There was Ingram. He had been a real
| estate dealer all these years, sometimes
with money TO feed his family, sometimes
without, waiting patiently for his origi-
nal city lots to rise in value. They had
steadily declined instead of rising, and he
could never get rich with such an incubus
about his neck But al last the boom
came, and he sold his city lots for $780,
| 700, and became established as a real
estate broker and manager 50 firmly that
now he is millionaire.
/ need not mention every name. know
! somebody VINO owned lots all those
! years, until the last, when prices
reached their very ebb tide, when the
lots were sold to put bread in the mouths
starving children and to bury the dead
| The boom came too late for him. But
I ~ Sc a.wafvF - ~ 4