Burlington was a little town of about 180 or 200 people, a quarter of a mile from the railroad depot when we came down from Denver. We could not see the town, as we arrived about 2:00 a.m., and we stayed in the depot until morning. There was not one building from the Montezuma Hotel up to the depot on the east side of main street, and not a building north of the two-story structure on the corner on the west side up to the depot. The cowboys staked their saddled horses out there.

South of the Montezuma Hotel were the following buildings: Frank Mann’s butcher shop, Henry Stoll Hardware, Maynard Cooke drug store, J. W. Penfold grocery store, Charlie Lamb grocery store, John Hiller saloon. East of that was a livery barn and Kaiser’s blacksmith shop. On the west side of main street (14), north of the location of Mrs. Wilson’s dress shop was the Odd Fellow Hall, the Post Office, a bank and some other buildings. That was the whole townsite.

One block west of main street, in the half block where the Hendricks mortuary is now located, was T. G. Price’s cow corral. I bought a horse from him while he was located there. Mr. Price was clerk of the district court for many years, and county judge one term. The courthouse set out there all alone. The Burlington Lumber Yard was located where the Foster yard is now. Burlington ton had a noce brick schoolhouse, considering the size of the town.

In 1893 Robert Campbell and J. W. Penfold bulit [SIC] a flour mill, located just east of the depot. Mr. Campbell was one of our early county clerks. They hired a miller from Kansas City, Mr. Edshes. He made four grades of flour – High Patent, Victor, Baker, and Cowboy. There was the poor families’ flour, 75c for a 48-pound sack. The bread looked like whole wheat, but it was good bread and many mothers taught their daughters how to bake, for you could not buy a loaf of bread in the store. All they had was soda crackers in wooden boxes as big as an egg case. They weighed them out to you in paper sacks. We never thought we would have as many stores in Burlington as they have today. So much for Burlington.

In the spring of 1892 I took a homestead, and built a shanty on a claim. I bought a team of oxen, one cow and four heifers, and started a little farm of my own. We felt happy when we could call a piece of land our own. The boys had a little song-

“I got some land from Uncle Sam,
And I am happy as a clam.
When I came here to get my start,
My neighbors they were miles apart,
But now there is one on every claim,
And sometimes they want all the same.
O Sweet Colorado land,
On my dugout roof I stand
And look away across the plains
And wonder if it ever rains,
And turn around and weed my corn
And think I’ll never sell my farm.”

We had two ministers here who were homesteaders. One was Rev. Hackenberger from Missouri Synod. He lived northeast of Burlington. The other lived over near Kanorado. They called him Preacher Willis. I never met him, but I knew Rev. Hackenberger. We met in Burlington quite often.

We had five ox teams in the Settlement – Mr. Stutz, Mr. Knodel, Mr. Hefner, my broher Matt, and myself owning teams. The reason we used oxen was because they were easy to feed when you worked them, needing no grain. We fed them cane or corn fodder. That’s all they needed. They are tame and don’t stray like horses, and nobody had money to build a fence for pasture. Horses sold high and you had to feed them grain when you worked them.

After I had some and broke out on the homestead, I took my little stock down to the river for feed. E. G. Davis, father of the Davis brothers, Louis, Ed, Rosser and Morton, would keep them with their cattle for so much a month until fall. Mr. Davis was one of our first county commissioners and was re-elected in 1893.

In the spring of 1894, after I had put in some corn and feed on my homestead and took my stock to Mr. Davis, I went to Denver in the hope of finding work, but conditions had not changed. 1894 was a very dry year in eastern Colorado. I looked for work in western Kansas and Nebraska. I would work on ranches and do anything I could get.

In the fall I went home to the brother’s and my homestead to spend the winter in peace and rest. The fall of 1894 several of the homesteaders left that I knew. They moved to other stakes but we had no place to go, and worked hard for what we had, so we stayed, knowing that God feeds the sparrow and would take care of us if we trusted Him. He did take care of us or I wouldn't be here today.

In those days there were only three farms on the road from the Settlement to Burlington. We cut across country from the Settlement to the Dartnell place, and to the Stetler and Burt Ragan places, and then across the railroad at the Equity elevator (the old one at the north end of main street or 14th street). From the church in the Settlement we made a road across to Claremont, now Straton. There was not one farm until we got within two miles of town. Claremont had one store on main street. Jim Roberts operated the store. He had the post office, drugs, dry goods, groceries and a little hardware, all in one building. He sat in a wheelchair as he could not walk, but his head was all business and to get trade from the Settlement he would pay 1 or 2 cents more for a dozen eggs and sell a sack of flour 5 cents cheaper than Burlington, and that would do it. You may ask how he got around if he could not walk. Well, he could wheel that chair around pretty good.

At noon his wife would come after him and push him home for dinner and bring him back to the store. I suppose she did the same thing in the morning and evening. He must have had a good wife. He had one man clerk to help him in the store and as he was the only dealer in town he could order farm implements – a plow, wagon, or anything you wanted. Give him your order and in two weeks you would have it, and you paid for the article when you got it. I got John Deere gang plows and a Moline wagon from him and saved $10.00 each.

Five Farmers lived around Claremont – Wellman and Kern east along the railroad; Fuller on the north, and Hobert and Chalmers northeast.

In the spring of 1895 the county commissioners shipped in spring wheat and gave every homesteader six bushels to sow. No one had a drill, so we sowed it by hand and plowed it under and harrowed the ground. It came up, looked like it might make wheat, then the first of June we got rain and hailstorm that cut it to the ground and that was the end of that.

Then we started to raise cattle and corn and cane for feed. It didn’t take much machinery – a walking lister, a walking cultivator and a little seed was all you needed. You could plant 10 to 11 acres with one bushel of corn and you had two or three months to shuck it. The cobs made good fuel for the stove and in the fall the stalks made good pasture when the ground was covered with snow. By this time we all had horses and let the ox go for beef.

In the spring of 1899, the John Ziegler family came down from Tripp, South Dakota, and settled 7 ½ miles southwest of our church. His father bought land for him and he later took a homestead. He was for many years the only farmer between the Settlement and Claremont, and he told me how the antelope would run around in bunches, from 15 to 30 head in a bunch. Yes, folks, we had quite a few of them in the early years. People would go out at lambing time and catch the little ones and raise them on cow’s milk and tame them. E. G. Davis had a pair, a billy and nanny, for two years or more. I saw them myself. There was also a pair in Burlington. The nanny was a little shy, but the billy would come right up to you. I saw them a few times, walking up and down the sidewalk, when I came to town. I can’t remember any more who owned them or how long they had them.

The country didn’t settle up much during the nineties. In 1901 Gottlob Amman and family came here from Nebraska and in 1902 his son Herman and family (Albert Amman’s folks) came. Grandfather Amman brought a little sled with him that a blacksmith in Nebraska made to clean small corn down in the lister furrows. The runners were four feet long, made out of 2 x 8’s with four knives, two long ones in front and two short ones behind. That was the best thing made to clean corn and cane before the weeder came out.

The Ammans later went back to Nebraska. Also in 1901, A. W. Winegar and Henry G. Weare came out and organized the Stock Growers State Bank in Burlington, with W. S. Selder as cashier. That was the first good bank in Burlington. Later Winegar and Weare organized the Kit Carson Land Company and tried to get people from Iowa and Nebraska out here to buy land.

The year 1908 was a dry one again. Corn got about three feet high and dried up and did not make good feed. We had a hard winter. It started to snow the day before Thanksgiving and kept it up until we had 18 inches of snow on the ground on the level and three to our feet in the yard. Our cattle didn’t get out of the yard for a month. We cut all the corn and put up thistles but that feed went fast and the snow stayed on. That was the first time we had to make a sled to go to town.

By January, 1909, we saw that we had to sell part of our cattle to get the rest through. We could not buy feed for money. Buyers came from eastern Kansas and offered us three cents a pound for steers and two cents a pound for cows and they weighed light. Big cows brought $18.00 a head, but the buyers knew we had to sell or let them die, so we had to take it.

1909 and 1910 were fairly good, but 1911 was like last year and this spring. Had to feed until May. We had two small elevators, Band and Abbott, but they didn’t get much in, and the railroad was awfully slow. Corn was 90c and a $1.00 a bushel, and we would gladly pay it if we could get it. When they got a car, they sold it out five bushels to a man so that everybody got a little. But finally spring got around the corner and stock could get out and help themselves.

I think if we had had machinery 50 years ado like we have today, we would have done a lot better. Farming has improved a lot in the last 50 years.

I would like to mention something about the mail. They had mail service in Burlington, but I think it was in 1891 that Yale Post Office was established. Sherman Yale was our first mail carrier and Mrs. Yale was the post master. The post office was in their house. They were good people. Mrs. Yale was kind of a family doctor and had some medicine. If anyone had trouble they would go to her for advice. We had a cow which was bitten on the front leg by a rattlesnake and the leg swelled up badly. He cow couldn’t walk, so I went to Mrs. Yale and she said to take lard and turpentine, half of each, and rub it on the cow’s leg several times a day. In a few days the cow was all right again.

Mrs. Yale had the post office from 1891 to 1908 and Mr. Yale carried the mail for about 12 years, three times a week from Burlington to Goff post office, then to Landsman post office, then to Yale. That was a long route for a horse and buggy days and the roads that we had. Later the Yales put in a little store and it would help in busy times, for you wouldn’t have to go to town. Mr. Yale was a county commissioner after he quit carrying the mail.

In 1909 we got our first daily mail route out of Bethune. Jesse McFarland was our first mail carrier with horse and buggy. He had two teams, one at the Ed Stahlecker place where he would change teams every day to make the round trip. That made it better for us. We didn’t have to go so far to get the mail.

In 1912 I bought the William Yale place and in the spring of 1915 I bought the Sherman Yale place. Our first children were boys and the homestead was too small, and there was no land around us to but. In 1917 I sold the homestead to our neighbors, Frank Kramer, and moved to the Sherman Yale place where we are still living with our son Carl and family in our own house, if God willing, the rest of our lives.

I forgot to mention that we had five cattle ranches of good size – the John Pugh ranch, the Harry Cox ranch, the Bar T, and the Jim Cook ranch, all on the Republican River, and the Ed McCrillis ranch on the Landsman, now the Spring Valley ranch.

From 1910 to 1921 this part of the country was well settled up and the land plowed up with big and little tractors. A. W. Winegar and F. E. Winegar did their share in bringing people in from the east.

This covers the first 30 years of my life around Burlington, as nearly as I can remember it, and I will come to a close now.

Mr. Schaal passed away January 19, 1959.