BROKEN BOW – The Custer County Historical Society will be hosting its 10th and final County Historical Tour as a two-day event on Thursday, April 13, and Saturday, April 15.
The tour will ideally cover six townships past and present strung across the county’s southern and southwestern hills: Oconto, Lodi, Lomax, Redfern, Buffalo, and curiously, Broken Bow. Those brushed up on their county geography and history may be quick to raise an eyebrow at the itinerary: at least 3 of the destinations no longer exist.
Custer County Historical Society curator Tammy Hendrickson is just as quick to point to historical value not only in terms of architecture, bricks, and mortar, but something less concrete, and to many people, even more valuable.
“There’s no evidence left of the towns,” she says, “except for the history to be told. So it’s about retelling that history, standing on those sites where maybe your grandparents stood, where your great-grandparents did things. That’s one of the most important things in retracing that history is asking, ‘Where did they do this? I want to stand where they stood.’”
That isn’t to say that the route is completely barren: the roughly 200 square-mile tour is still full of surprises. A still-intact cemetery straddles the line between two past townships, divided by road, its tenants partitioned accordingly; Broken Bow’s first brick building, a church, stands a little taller thanks to good bones: the bricks themselves were fired in Broken Bow furnaces.
There should also prove to be the occasional oddity: for one, Hendrickson affirms, an unexpected grave marker for a long-gone church.
“There’s a cemetery with an outhouse because it had the church there. The church is no longer there, but they do still have that. It’s a nice one, too,” Hendrickson laughs, “it even has toilet paper in it, in a little coffee can.”
Hendrickson also hints that perhaps “uninhabited” isn’t quite the right word for some of the towns; it could be that their inhabitants just live somewhere else.
“Somebody will have some stories along the tour. That’s the fun part: everyone will join in on those stories. Somebody will talk about where they did things, or what they did as a child, or where grandpa and grandma did things.”
The tour will kick off on Thursday night with an information session so those touring on Saturday can get the lay of the land, so to speak; the three-hour program will start at 6 p.m. and provide a thorough backdrop via a multimedia presentation and talk from the museum curator herself.
Saturday will mark the tour proper: the trip begins at 9 a.m. and should go until about 4 or 5 p.m., with a built-in lunch break. It will begin at the Custer County Museum, head south, west, then north, and will fittingly finish the afternoon, and a decade county of tours, with an in-depth look at the county seat: Broken Bow.
Tickets are $50, can be purchased through the museum, and cover both days, lunch, and appropriate rest stops; after all, it may be best, as the county brings to light the stories of its past, to leave a certain coffee can behind.
