History

(FROM ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO THE OMAHA WORLD-HERALD, September 29, 1993)

"In June, 1729, Pierre and Paul Mallet reached the mouth of a wide and shallow river which they named the Platte, an Indian word meaning “flat”. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark reached the Platte on July 21, 1804, having sighted the mouth of Weeping Water Creek just one day earlier: “We passed, at about three miles distance, a small willow Island to the north of a creek on the south, about twenty-five yards wide, by the French called L’eau qui pleure’, or the Weeping Water”."

Weeping Water

An Indian legend tells of a battle which began I when one tribe stole the daughter of another tribe’s chief, and ended three days later when all the braves lay dead. The tears cried by the families of the fallen warriors were said to have formed the “Weeping waters.”

The first white settlers arrived In March 1856. Elam Flower and Darrell Reed built a log house, which was used at various times as a church, a school, and a stable. In 1857 a post office named “Weeping Water” was established. It was 10 years before a village was platted and a store opened. The town incorporated in 1870. The railroad, which arrived in 1883, ensured its continued existence, and by 1888 Weeping Water achieved the status of a second-class city.

Many things have changed. The steam whistle of an approaching passenger train no longer echoes across the valley, and the livery stable has been replaced by Keckler’s filling station and Mogensen’s garage. However, Michelsen’s variety store, a grocery and hardware, and a bank still stand on main street. Rail cars still load grain from the elevator, and limestone from three quarries is still transported all around the globe.

Gone with the fire and forge of the blacksmiths are the opera house and movie theatre, but baseball games still bring out a crowd, and the whole town shuts down when the basketball team makes the state finals. Local residents work hard to put on annual events — “Limestone Days” and the Cass County Fair. In 1967 the community celebrated its first century of progress.

— Jean Matteson, Lincoln, Neb. and Edith
Matteson, Connecticut, Ohio.