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Pages of History
In 1947, every road leading into Hartington was unpaved — a network of dirt and gravel approaches that turned to mud in the spring and dust in the summer, shaping not just how people traveled, but how they thought about progress.
When Highway 15 between Laurel and Coleridge was rerouted in 1940, the road was blacktopped. But the stretch between Coleridge and Hartington was not — another reminder of how incomplete the region’s road system still was.
Hartington did not have a single hard-surfaced road in 1947.
Transportation, and not just roads, was on the mind of Cedar County residents in 1947. Civil aviation was the coming thing after World War II, and Hartington already had gotten into the act.
In March, that city bought 185 acres of farmland a mile and a half south of town on old Highway 15. Plans called for developing a Class 1 airport with two runways, each 2,200 feet long.
Laurel was not far behind. During the last week of April, a number of businessmen got together and decided that Laurel needed an airport, too.
Luther Einung, a flying farmer who lived northeast of town, was asked to help. Einung said he would attempt to start a flight training school under the new G.I. Bill if funds were available and if he had local backing.
Magnus Hansen, who owned a 60-acre tract east of town, agreed to lease the property for $500 a year. Local businessmen were asked to donate enough to cover the first year’s rent. Einung agreed to cover the rent after that. He also promised to build a hangar for his own plane and assume responsibility for running the project. Laurel’s new landing strip would be ready in May.
Einung’s uncle, John N. Einung, was involved in a more down-to-earth problem. “Since the blizzard and the spring thaws took the bottom out of our roads, gravel is one of the foremost topics of discussion in Cedar County,” Allan Wickett wrote in a letter to the Advocate. Einung’s company would furnish much of the gravel for the country roads in this part of the state. Wickett was in favor of improving the country roads but did not think gravel was the way to go. “When the snow thaws, the gravel roads will revert to mud without continuous maintenance,” he said.
Wickett thought concrete, while initially more expensive, would be the best solution in the long run. “Gravel runs about $800 a mile, and in 10 years each road likely would have to be graveled three times. We can have only so many miles of gravel without making continuous repairs costing more than the taxpayer can bear,” he said.
Asphalt was another option, at least for highways. In April, the Nebraska Highway Department called for bids for 18 miles of asphalt on Highway 15 between Laurel and Hartington. The work was to be divided into two projects — 8.6 miles from Laurel to Coleridge and 9.4 miles from Coleridge to Hartington.
Women and children generally did not go into saloons in those days. So patrons of the Central Bar were surprised when Viola Dalton and her young son made an unexpected visit one afternoon.
Fourteen-year-old Bobby Dalton, who was driving his mother’s 1939 Ford, pulled into a parking space in front of the bar when the brakes suddenly went out. The car jumped the curb and crashed through the bar’s plateglass window. No one was injured.
The baby boom was well underway by 1947. According to the Advocate, Cedar County’s crop of babies was never bigger than in the past 12 months.
In his weekly column, “Ribs by Rog,” Editor Hill noted $443 million was spent on atomic bomb development during the current fiscal year. “It is comforting to believe nothing is going to happen to us while the atomic bomb belongs exclusively to the United States. We wouldn’t use it for anything other than national defense,” he said.
But with the help of a number of American spies, including Klaus Fuchs, Harry Gold, David Greenglass and his sister Ethel Rosenberg, along with her husband Julius, the Soviets would have an atomic bomb by 1949.
