Early Growth · The Eddyville Courant and Town Claims

An 1892 description published in The Eddyville Courant presented the young community as a growing town in the Wood River Valley. The account listed three general stores, a grocery, two hardware stores, two furniture stores, a lumber yard, a livery barn, a flour and feed store, grain buyers, a stock buyer, a drug store, a newspaper, a large school building, a church under construction, a cereal mill, a thirty-room hotel, and a restaurant.

The Eddyville Cereal Mill was constructed in 1892 and made its first shipment of chopped feed on July 1 of that year. It closed in 1893 during the national depression and apparently never reopened, even though it was still listed for sale as late as 1896.

Drought and national depression brought hard times to the area from 1893 to 1895. Stephen Crane was sent to Nebraska in 1895 to report on drought conditions, and his time snowbound in Eddyville is widely believed to have helped inspire his short story “The Blue Hotel.” He also wrote “Nebraska’s Bitter Fight For Life,” describing conditions among the drought-stricken, especially those south of Eddyville.

Eddyville later recovered. The population was 101 in 1900 and 254 in 1910. By 1905 the town had three churches: St. Patrick Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran, and Christian. McFarland also notes that a large operation just north of town was the Buzzard’s Roost Ranch owned by John B. Colton.

Our Town · Dolores McFarland · 2000