Massive reservoirs bookend much of the Republican River’s length through southern Nebraska. In Hitchcock County, the shimmering ribbon of blue fills the 5,000-acre Swanson Reservoir near Trenton. Downstream 110 miles, the river pools to form more than 13,000 acres of Harlan County Lake near Republican City. Both reservoirs provide critical irrigation water to farmers, and each is the nucleus of recreational retreats for anglers, hunters, bird watchers, hikers and nature lovers. But why they formed is a darker tale from history.

 America’s heartland was suffering through the Great Depression and prolonged drought when Decoration Day, the precursor to Memorial Day, arrived in the Republican River Valley in May 1935.

Families adorning the graves of loved ones were oblivious to storms building high over the headwaters of the North Fork of the Republican River in Colorado. As the clouds opened, some residents believed their constant prayers for rain were being answered.

Rain doused the parched earth for three days. Twenty-four inches fell in 24 hours along the South Fork of the Republican River. Twelve inches fell in the Upper Republican Valley.

The river and its contributing creeks swelled. Tributaries in Kansas and Colorado sent a slurry of muddy water and debris churning toward southwest Nebraska.

At McCook, the river rose 10 feet in 12 minutes. Homesteads, communities and lives along the Republican River were decimated. Thousands of Nebraskans were left homeless. More than 300 of the state’s bridges and 341 miles of highway were destroyed. In Nebraska, the flood claimed 94 human lives.

Inspired by the deadliest flood in recorded Nebraska history, the Republican River was quickly subdued, primarily hemmed in by reservoirs created for flood control. The river culture changed for residents who lived intimately with the untamed stream. Decades after completion, the lakes are recreational destinations critical to local communities and occupied by residents and visitors, forming a unique aquatic culture of their own.

 

Harlan County Lake

North Shore Marina is the hub of a lakeside community anchored on the north side of Harlan County Lake. More than 8,000 people attended when the dam was dedicated in 1952, a metropolis compared to the 160 full-time residents in Republican City today. Another 400-500 residents live near the marina, most of them calling the lake home only on weekends or during summer vacations.

Before owning the marina, Bruce Beins walked to the lake after school to fish for crappie around the docks. He preferred standing on solid ground. His dad’s boat – built of weathered 2x4s, chicken wire and 55-gallon barrels – leaked like a sieve.

These days, Beins and friend Steve Dornhoff explore the lake in a proper 24-foot pontoon boat, the craft’s 115-horsepower inboard motor easily pushing through the whitecaps. Beins talks about the dam being the largest earth-filled dam in the world when it was built, how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers put former World War II soldiers to work to complete the Harlan County Dam, and how there are 75 miles of shoreline when the lake is full.

“They wanted the dam to be able to hold five 1935 floods, Beins said, “and they way overbuilt it.”

Pointing out the Pawnee camp known as “White Cat” and the “Indian Hill” burial ground that the University of Nebraska dug up and reinterred, Dornhoff uses landmarks to pinpoint the location of the former townsite. The boat’s fish-finding sonar shows about six feet of Republican River water covering the original site of Republican City. Waving his arm in a wide arc toward the south shore, Dornhoff mentions another landmark – Bone Cove.

Local lore tells of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody and a cohort trapping in the area when Cody suffered a broken leg. The friend fashioned a rocky lean-to shelter for Cody before leaving for Fort Kearny for help. Always the fabulist, Cody later bragged of fighting off thieves who tried to steal his food. The rock shelter caved in long ago, and the cove itself is accessible by boat only in the wettest years.

Beins has found pharmacy bottles and other relics. They are illegal to remove since the lake is federal property. In the driest times, the ghostly image of the former town’s railroad tracks comes into view. “You can walk the streets and sidewalks of the original Republican City,” Beins said.

Up the hill in the new Republican City, Sara Hammond operates The Island bait shop and restaurant. One minute she’s flipping her famous Island Burgers, the next scooping minnows into buckets for anglers. This is about as close as she gets to the lake. On the other hand, her husband and business co-owner, Arik, has a love affair with the reservoir.

He’s a two-time winner of the Governor’s Cup Walleye Tournament and teaches their four children how to hunt and fish. Memorable catches include several 8-pound walleyes and a turtle that he fought for 15 minutes before cutting the line. Hammond is thankful for the lake, pointing out the close relationship that the community has with the local U.S. Army Corps of Engineers staff who manage the dam and lake.

“Everyone around here understands that the decisions on when water is released aren’t made here,” Hammond said. “During the 2019 flood, there weren’t a lot of options. We had to hold water here. The flooding upstream from the dam was unfortunate for all.”

According to Tom Zikmund, the Corps’ local Natural Resources Specialist, the date July 23, 2019, set the record pool for Harlan County Lake – 12 feet higher than usual – three feet higher than the previous high-water record for the lake. “Most of our docks, and North Shore Marina, were all flooded,” Zikmund said. “The 2019 flood challenged us, but we showed that we can slow the flood. We inspect Harlan County Dam every day, and for as old as the dam is, she does a tremendous job.”

Kenneth and Juanita Gregoire lived in Kansas and planned for retirement 16 years ago when Harlan County Lake came into their lives. “I was having coffee with a group of scoundrels, talking about looking at a place on a Missouri lake, when a man who overheard us tapped me on the shoulder,” Gregoire said. “He said, ‘I’ve got a house to show you.’ ”

That afternoon, the Gregoires saw their soon-to-be new lake home for the first time. Rain fell on their drive to Nebraska and was still falling as the couple stepped onto the deck overlooking the lake. “Just then, the rain stopped, and a rainbow formed,” Juanita said. “It was divine. I knew we were home.”

He doesn’t fish, but Kenneth has filled several large jars with the old lures, plastic bobbers and other fishing tackle snagged in lakeside rocks and limbs. Lake life here is quiet, except for the occasional Johnny Cash song playing on a passing boat or an occasional bark from the Gregoires’ German shepherds, Easy and Izzie. Purple martens returning to the bird condo on a pole Kenneth made for them is a sure sign of summer. Juanita believes multiple l here.

“The people at Patterson’s Harbor are different from those at North Shore. The Patterson people are very close, and the North Shore people golf together,” she said. “The people in these nine houses on Abbey Road are a tight-knit family, too, and that’s not a bad thing. And then you’ve got Alma.”

 

Alma

The community of Alma, upstream from Republican City, spreads in every direction from the intersection of U.S. Highways 136 and 183. Most of the community’s 1,300 residents could walk out their front doors and be on the lakeshore in a few minutes. The neighborhood is quiet on most summer days, except at Fisherman’s Corner.

The beef is fresh and the beer cold at this combination liquor store, cafe and bait shop. The bait tanks are concrete burial vaults – rejects, owner Kent Shaffer thinks – but they’ve held water since the 1970s.

Since he was 8, Hildreth native Ron Einspahr has been coming to this lake. He lives six blocks away from it and is known for bringing stringers of channel catfish home and inviting neighbors over for fish fries. He also has a reputation for knowing what’s biting where.

While running the front counter, he quizzes anglers who stop for beers after being out on the lake and dispenses that intel to those headed out. “Never gets old talking about fishing. I can talk fishing all day,” said Einspahr, who points out that on any given Memorial Day, Fourth of July or Labor Day, his local lake attracts 30,000 people or more.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates that the $25 million that 670,000 visitors spent within 30 miles of Harlan County Lake in 2019 helped support 245 local jobs: convenience stores, restaurants, hotels, and bait shops like this one.

Locals say that people traded their Jet Skis for ATVs when the lake went down. Then the lake came back up. The same applies to local home prices: When the lake is low, home prices fall. When the water rises, so does the cost of a house near the lake.

“I don’t know if we are different here. I think we’re just the same old friendly Nebraskans found anywhere in the state,” Shaffer said. “But we do have the only live bait in Alma, and Nebraska’s best lake.

 

Republican River

From Alma, the Republican River Valley winds in a wide arc north and west past Orleans, Oxford, Edison, Arapahoe, Holbrook, Cambridge, Bartley, Indianola, McCook, Culbertson and Trenton. All those communities are north of the Republican River, and each suffered massive losses in the 1935 flood.

The Oxford Museum remembers the deluge with a timeline painted on one wall in Oxford. Museum board member Nancy Knuth is an expert on the event. She tells of the valley’s Native Americans warning pioneers of floods filling the valley from bluff to bluff. When that came true, and floodwaters reached Oxford at about midnight on that fateful night in 1935, Knuth’s father, Max Banwell, got in the water to try and save the Fuchs family.

Thirteen family members were all at Orville and Dorothy Fuchs’ home when water began rushing in. Orville hacked a hole through the attic, and everyone climbed out onto the roof. Two family members fell off the home when it floated off its foundation. The rest of the family was flung into the water when the floating house crashed into a tree and split.

“Orville was a good swimmer due to his World War I Navy experience,” Knuth said. “He tucked his infant son, Howard, inside his bib overalls. Dorothy held onto an overall strap with one hand and their daughter Willis Lou’s hand with the other.” Knuth’s voice becomes barely audible as she tells museum visitors what happened next.

“There was so much debris that Dorothy lost her grasp on her daughter’s hand. Devastated over the loss of the girl, in the darkness, Orville heard his wife say, ‘I’m leaving.’ She let go, and she was pulled under,” Knuth said.

Some reports state that Orville and Howard were marooned with their dog, Jack, on an island for 36 hours before being rescued. Knuth has heard that they were stuck in a tree.

“Rats and snakes were floating downstream. Orville saw a quart of peaches float by and grabbed it. That provided their only food and drink until the National Guard arrived,” Knuth said. “Only four members of the Fuchs family lived. All the women died.”

Eighty-seven years after the devastating deluge, the high-water mark remains visible south of Arapahoe between the Republican River and Muddy Creek.

There was no house on the land when Douglas and Cheryl Schutz purchased the farm in 1991, and the mill that once produced White Dove Flour was beyond repair. The Schutzes built a home two feet higher than the 1935 flood. “We have a basement, but we’re goosey about it,” Douglas said. “The 1935 flood took the topsoil, and the flood of 2012 brought sandburs and other weeds. In the valley, floods are always in the back of everyone’s mind.”

The Schutz’s razed most of the former mill and elevator that was later converted to a hydroelectric dam. They saved one brick building from the complex, unable to bring themselves to dismantle what had survived nature’s fury intact. A black line five feet up on the door jamb is accompanied by a handwritten remark that reads, “1935 flood.”

Before marrying 58 years ago, Douglas and Cheryl attended the same Lutheran and public schools. Their families went to the same church. Douglas and his childhood friends explored the river, fishing with rod and reel and by hand.

“One buddy was reaching under the bank when his face turned white, and he asked, ‘Do catfish have fur?’ We paid a little more attention after that,” Schutz said. “We’d dink around in the river a lot, and we caught lots of big catfish.”

The Schutz’s sons and grandsons farm the family land today, which leaves Douglas plenty of time to feed the trout in his pond, but he rarely wets a line of his own.

“The river was a big deal when I was a kid, but there’s not as much water in it now. During the irrigation season, it drops to about nothing,” Schutz said. “Back in the day, some of the old-timers would trap for a living and eat it, too. But access to private land these days is a problem, and that river culture is long gone.”

George Sund echoes those comments. In 39 years as a game warden for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, much of it along the Republican River between Oxford and McCook, he only had to draw his weapon one time – when he encountered a man harvesting marijuana. Another time, Sund found himself in the crosshairs.

He was surveying with binoculars and saw a man pointing a rifle at him. “That guy was just looking through the scope to see what I was doing,” Sund said. “I later told him that if someone has a gun pointed at me, I assume he’s going to shoot and that next time, I’d shoot back. I’ll treat people as well as they treat me.”

According to Sund, people have placed many demands on Republican River water. “You can use the river from April to about June, but there’s not usually enough water to float a canoe the rest of the year,” he said. “Much different than when I was growing up along the river near Superior noodling for catfish on Sunday afternoons. It wasn’t legal in Nebraska then and isn’t now, but some of the best game wardens I ever knew started as some of the biggest crooks.”

 

Swanson Reservoir

Unlike Harlan County Lake and its tens of thousands of weekend visitors, this lake west of Trenton sees crowds in the hundreds on its busiest weekends – like when the walleye are spawning along the dam – or when giant schools of white bass are on the move. A few dozen residences, many of them in trailers, occupy one small area near the state-owned Good Life Marina.

The good life, indeed. Pelicans outnumber visitors most days at this peaceful escape one-third the size of Harlan County Lake. What it lacks in mass, it makes up for in tranquility.

“For a birder like me, Swanson Reservoir is a terrific treasure hunt,” said Pat Shoenfelder, a photographer from Imperial. “The bald eagles gather in winter, and huge flocks of snow geese stop. In early spring, the shorebirds migrate through, and the reedy areas are great places to spot great blue herons. I’m never disappointed at Swanson.”

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was already working in the valley when Nebraska Sen. George Norris’ Flood Control Act of 1944 authorized the construction of dams on the Republican River and its tributaries.

Shoenfelder has a personal connection to those flood control efforts. Her uncle, Willard Kregger, was an engineer on the Enders Reservoir project on Frenchman Creek, which feeds the Republican River. More than a dozen such dams were built in Nebraska and Kansas. As construction flourished, a Republican River flood in 1947 removed any doubt of the need for flood control. Swanson Reservoir was established with the completion of Trenton Dam in 1953.

While localized flooding still occurs, a significant deluge has not widely damaged the Republican River Valley since 1960.

“The Republican River has returned to its quiet ways, a gentle giant sleeping on the prairies of Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado,” said Joy Hayden, author of The 1935 Republican River Flood. “Will it waken again? The next chapter of the Republican River is being written today by those living along its banks, those who control the rights to its waters, and those who govern the land through which it flows.”