Gordon, Nebraska: Named for a Man the Army Turned Back
The Army burned John Gordon’s wagon train about five miles from where Gordon, Nebraska, stands today. Then the lieutenant who did it lost his job.
Wagons, oxen and a bonfire
Lilian Fitzpatrick tells the story in her 1925 book on Nebraska place names. John Gordon of Sioux City set out “with a train of wagons” for the Black Hills “when the country was still a part of Indian territory and closed to white settlers.” A lieutenant with a detachment of U.S. cavalry caught up with him about five miles from today’s town. “Mr. Gordon’s oxen were turned loose and his wagons and freight burned.”
The lieutenant paid for it
Here’s the part you might not expect. Fitzpatrick adds that “for this offense the lieutenant was later dismissed from the service.” So the officer who stopped Gordon lost his job, and Gordon got a town.
Who put his name on the map
A Sheridan County sketch in the 1940 Who’s Who in Nebraska says the Rev. John A. Scamahorn, who led a colony of settlers from Indiana in 1884, named the town “after the adventurer, John Gordon, whose expedition to the Black Hills ended disastrously in 1875.” That’s where the year comes from; Fitzpatrick doesn’t give one. So if you drive into Gordon today, you’re not far from the spot where his trip fell apart.
Sources & further reading
- Lilian Linder Fitzpatrick, Nebraska Place-Names (University of Nebraska, 1925). Public domain. Gordon’s wagon train, the cavalry and the dismissed lieutenant.
- NEGenWeb, Sheridan County sketch from Who’s Who in Nebraska (1940). Scamahorn’s Indiana colony and the 1875 date.
- GNIS feature 829591 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Gordon. Incorporated 1885.
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