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When the city of North Platte, Nebraska, celebrates its 150th anniversary next year, the Church of Our Savior will have much to contribute. North Platte exists today because in 1866 the Union Pacific Railroad extended its line to that point along the North Platte River.
North Platte’s identity as a frontier town — a way station between railroads and covered wagons moving further west — has given Church of Our Savior several brushes with history, and attorney Steve Kay has recorded them with diligence.
Much of the parish history is evident in everyday surroundings. A wood altar and reredos in St. George’s Chapel are the handiwork of the Rev. Charles F. Chapman, the parish’s rector from 1905 to 1913. The wood came from two saloons, including “Guy’s Place,” which benefited from the business of Col. William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody.
Kay cites the late historian Nellie Snyder Yost on the importance of Guy’s Place in Cody’s life.
“In time Guy Laing’s saloon, across the street from the depot, came to be the favorite with Cody and the general run of cowboys,” Yost wrote in The Call of the Range: The Story of the Nebraska Stock Growers Association (Sage Books, 1966).
Yost wrote 13 years later: “If half the stories told of Buffalo Bill and his drinking are true, he must have patronized all of them, although only a few are mentioned with any frequency by those who knew him. One belonged to Guy Laing, his rancher friend; it was a highly popular Front Street place, directly across from the depot” (Buffalo Bill: His Family, Friends, Fame, Failures, and Fortunes; Swallow Press).
Material History The Living Church
I would like to see that, if I happened to be passing through.
North Platte’s identity as a frontier town — a way station between railroads and covered wagons moving further west — has given Church of Our Savior several brushes with history, and attorney Steve Kay has recorded them with diligence.
Much of the parish history is evident in everyday surroundings. A wood altar and reredos in St. George’s Chapel are the handiwork of the Rev. Charles F. Chapman, the parish’s rector from 1905 to 1913. The wood came from two saloons, including “Guy’s Place,” which benefited from the business of Col. William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody.
Kay cites the late historian Nellie Snyder Yost on the importance of Guy’s Place in Cody’s life.
“In time Guy Laing’s saloon, across the street from the depot, came to be the favorite with Cody and the general run of cowboys,” Yost wrote in The Call of the Range: The Story of the Nebraska Stock Growers Association (Sage Books, 1966).
Yost wrote 13 years later: “If half the stories told of Buffalo Bill and his drinking are true, he must have patronized all of them, although only a few are mentioned with any frequency by those who knew him. One belonged to Guy Laing, his rancher friend; it was a highly popular Front Street place, directly across from the depot” (Buffalo Bill: His Family, Friends, Fame, Failures, and Fortunes; Swallow Press).
Material History The Living Church
I would like to see that, if I happened to be passing through.
