Hollenberg Way Station

Then, 1857

In 1857, when Washington County was created in the newly organized Kansas Territory, Gerat H. and Sophia Hollenberg moved there to capitalize on the traffic from the Oregon-California Trail. They built a one room log cabin that grew into a five room inn providing needed supplies, hot meals and a night’s lodging for weary travelers. In 1860, it became a way station on the Pony Express route that ran from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California.

[Note. After Hollenberg, the Pony Express Route swung north to the Rock Creek Station in Nebraska where Wild Bill Hickock, who was hired by the stage company, became involved in a deadly shoot out called the McCanles Massacre.]

Dr. Charles M. Clark gives us a description of the Hollenberg Way Station in 1860.

Here, there is “a small stream which is dry during the summer months. The approach … is winding and steep, and as the bed of the stream contains several large stones at the ford, some care is necessary in driving. There are two good springs here, but no wood. The [Overland] Stage Company [has] a station here, and there [are] also one or two other buildings.”

A Trip to Pike’s Peak, Dr. C. M. Clark, 1860

Now, December 2021

More than one hundred and seventy five years have passed since Francis Parkman made his hunting trip into Kansas that would become the subject of the book, The Oregon Trail. The Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Sioux, Ute, Otoe, Kansa, Kiowa, Osage, Omaha, Ponca, Pawnee, and Wichita, Native American Indian tribes, all roamed the plains that once provided a seemingly inexhaustible supply of buffalo that numbered in the tens of millions.

Today, the there are plenty of trees, a sign that the buffalo and the prairie fires that once swept the Kansas plains clear of trees are gone. The log cabin station is still there. The trail, for the most part is forgotten or ignored, as quicker routes west can be found along I-70 and I-80. All of Washington County today numbers about 5,000.

The site lies west of Marysville and west of Cottonwood Creek. It is east of the Little Blue River that flows by nearby Hanover. In 1872, Hollenberg and his wife packed their belongings and moved to a new site close to Hanover that would become Hollenberg, Kansas, population today, 21, more or less.

Gerat died on a trip to Germany two years later. Sophia lived on until 1914. The couple had one son who died in infancy.

Pike’s Peak or Bust

Clark’s trip to Pike’s Peak was occasioned by the report of gold in 1858, characterized by the slogan, “Pike’s Peak or Bust!” Hollenberg had himself participated in previous “gold rushes” and was content to mine the thousands of travelers heading west.

Hollenberg Inn and Way Station on the Oregon Trail and Pony Express Station

Hollenberg Inn and Pony Express Way Station, 2021

Hollenberg Pony Express Home Station

I was driving south through Beatrice, Nebraska (pronounced Be-a-trice with the accent on the second syllable). Beatrice, meaning she who makes me happy, the unhappy inspiration for Dante, he who wrote about hell. One hundred and fifty-eight summers ago, Wild Bill Hickok was tried and acquitted for the murder of David McCanles at the nearby Red Rock Pony Express Station.

I was making my way into Kansas on Highway 148. It had rained for two days and two nights and time to go home. I should have stayed on Highway 77, but then I would have missed the Hollenberg Pony Express Home Station, just east of Hanover on winding Kansas Highway 148. Inside the Kansas Historical Association was getting ready for a historical reenactment.

interior of a old general store, Hollenberg Pony Express Way Station

The downstairs served as a general store, restaurant and saloon, post office, and home to the Hollenberg family, upstairs sleeping quarters for guests. Outbuildings served as a stable for mounts and a blacksmith shop for travelers on the Oregon and California Trails.

The short brief life of the Hollenberg Pony Express Home Station

Nothing lasts forever.

This one, the Pony Express, its riders, and its Way Stations were brief, little more than a year, from April 3, 1860, to October 1861. Once the concept was proven, i.e. news needed to travel from east to west, and west to east, the telegraph wires were strung and news traveled at the speed of light.

Still, those young hardy riders and their fast horses became American lore, the stuff of legends and movies.

Gerat H. Hollenberg

The Hollenberg station was built in 1858 by Gerat H. Hollenberg. It served as home to his family, stable for mounts, general store, post office, restaurant for travelers, and hotel for guests. After the Pony Express became history, Hollenberg helped start the town of Hanover, named for the German province of Hanover where Hollenberg was born, and served three terms in the Kansas Territorial Legislature. For a while, the Hollenberg house served as a stopping point for the northern branch of the Kansas Butterfield Overland Mail Route. In march of 1860, Wells Fargo took over the failing Butterfield Line, and then in 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad called a halt to the stagecoach.

Upstairs, gentle readers, the guests on the stagecoach slept, if they stayed at all. Downstairs, they ate and drank, shared stories, passed along the news. We are prone to think that news did not spread quickly back then. Not true.

It spread like a wildfire, from one tongue to the next ear, like the snap of a whip.

Wild Bill Hickok

Across the border in Nebraska was the Rock Creek Station, where Wild Bill Hickok shot and killed the owner, David McCanles on July 12, 1861. The next day McCanles’ brother Leroy swore out a complaint for murder.

Hickok plead self defense at his trial and with no witnesses against him, he was quickly acquitted.

In 1867, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine published an exaggerated account of the shoot-out which claimed that Hickok had single-handedly killed nine men. Hickok was quoted as saying, “I was wild and I struck savage blows.”

Thus began the legend of “Wild Bill.”

interior of a old general store, Hollenberg Pony Express Way Station