Nebraska State Historical Society
Date of this Version
1887
Abstract
To found a city is a human ambition older than history. The name of the engineer that set the metes and bounds of the first block and street in Jerusalem, or Athens, or Philadelphia, or Minneapolis, may be obliterated by the tides for time, but his work endures to this day, and the man who would tamper with his records or shift his landmarks, is a miscreant by the unanimous voice of the nations. But there are other ambitions almost as exigent. Other than dreams of immortality nerve many a pioneer to make the fight for his rival site for the seat of governement of a state, or of a county, or for a railroad station. It is a dream of corner lots, of speculation, of bonds and mortgages, and deeds and commissions, and sudden wealth.
Comments
Published in TRANSACTIONS AND REPORTS OF THE NEBRASKA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, vol. 2 (Lincoln, NE, 1887).