Nebraska: Travels Through Time and History

In the summer of 1896, Second Lieutenant Charles Ezra Stodter graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, married his home town sweetheart, Pauline Stowe, and together they reported to his first posting Fort Robinson, Nebraska. His first unit was Troop K of the 9th Cavalry Regiment, one of the buffalo soldier regiments. He could not have known the family legacy he had begun.

Fast forward 121 years, and his great-grandson, Dean, now the 4th generation of Stodters to graduate from USMA arrives at Fort Robinson on an “extended vacation” (YOFO!), mildly curious about the history of this former frontier outpost, now a Nebraska State Recreation Area. Upon perusing a display on the role of the 9th Cav at the post in the small museum at the old post Headquarters, a slow awareness begins to creep up on him that he has seen the words “Fort Robinson” and “9th Cavalry” before, and that they are significant to the family. To the googles! In a rare Verizon LTE-signal moment, it took only a second to bring up the USMA memoriam page on C.E. Stodter and come to the “shit-eatin’-grin” realization that, sure enough, we had stumbled on a super-fun piece of Stodter family history. After talking to the museum curator (who was a very talkative chap, but not much help in shedding light on the 9th Cavalry at Fort Robinson), we visited the officer housing, still intact from their original 1880s construction. Adobe brick apparently makes for some rather durable construction materials! Of course, we couldn’t be certain that the quarters we toured were Dean’s great grandparent’s actual first home, but 2LT Stodter and Pauline certainly lived on that street and in that row of 8 or 9 houses. In his memoirs (which Dean just happened to have brought with us in the YOFOhome), Charles Ezra writes, “They were one story double houses of adobe with a large back yard with a stable and a shed for stove wood and other things. The back yard was surrounded by a high board fence and the front yard had a low picket fence. The house had a living room, dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms, bathroom, and a hallway extending from the front door to the kitchen. It was heated by stoves which burned wood.” Given his description, the house we toured had been preserved/restored as he described it. In any case, the view from the backyard had not changed and was spectacular, and given the social traditions of paying calls on other officers, they almost certainly had been in this house before and likely consumed a meal and some adult beverages there! The rest of the post provided context to the role of Fort Robinson and the soldiers assigned there. It was originally established to help prosecute the Indian wars, and thereafter to enforce and implement the various treaties with the tribes, while protecting the Indian agents. As you might imagine on a horse cavalry post, the veterinary hospital was big, and included a surgery complete with the hinged tables on which they would strap horses while vertical, and then lay down to horizontal. At other times the post served as a military working-dog training facility and during World War II it was a large Prisoner of War facility primarily for German prisoners from Rommel’s Afrika Korps. 2LT C.E. Stodter remained there for two years until the 9th Cav were deployed in 1898 to fight in the Spanish American war; in fact, Troop K, commanded by Lieutenant Stodter was the unit directly on the left flank of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the assault on San Juan Hill. If you couldn’t tell, we dove into Great grandpa’s memoirs which tells a fascinating tale of Army life from the turn of the century until Colonel Stodter retired in 1935 after 39 years of service!

The opportunity to visit Fort Robinson came from camping in Chadron State Recreation Area in Nebraska, a small, but nice recreation area in Nebraska’s northwest corner, about a 30-minute drive from Fort Robinson. It was close enough to also allow for a half-day trip to the Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, a little farther south of Fort Robinson. The Agate Fossil Beds are the site of important paleontological (great word, right?) finds around the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The land owner, Cook, stumbled across some exposed bones in the side of a bluff on his land. He called in an academic from the state university and thus began decades of significant paleontological findings. One of the more unique discoveries were the daemonelix (devil’s corkscrew) – fossilized underground spiral burrows of a prehistoric critter related to beavers but behaving more like today’s prairie dogs. The Fossil Beds were in the middle of “Nowheresville,” but had an awesome visitors center and offered us a chance to take a couple of short hikes. The “beware of rattlesnakes” signs were everywhere. We did not spot any, but we did see a couple of horny-toads, which we concluded was a bona-fide wildlife sighting, and found a dead kangaroo rat (ok, not exactly wildlife). Cook also had an excellent and trusting relationship with the surrounding American Indian tribes (mostly Sioux) that spanned about 40 years and multiple generations. The Cook family has allowed the park to display many of the artifacts and gifts given to him over the years by the tribal elders. These included items that had belonged to Crazy Horse, as well as Chief Red Cloud, his family and descendants.

Our stay in Nebraska was brief but rewarding. And yes, Dean bought a Fort Robinson t-shirt.