Colonel C F Betz

BETZ PRITCHARD

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 4/18/2010 at 22:45:09

Woodbury County History 1984

Colonel C F Betz
By Colonel Betz in 1940

I was born in Gallipolis, Ohio, in 1868, the son of Smith Betz and Phoebe Pritchard Betz. Their ancestors came from Bavaria to the States in 1600. The family moved to Kansas to homestead property and then moved to Lincoln, Nebraska.

In 1887, I bought a team of horses and started to work grading for the railroad, which was building a road from Lincoln to Weeping Water and then on to Beatrice and worked there for the Rock Island Railroad. I finished that job in 1891. With my earnings I bought more teams and went to Great Bend, Kansas, to work. The Rock Island was building a road from Pratt Center to the State line south, and I got part of that to build.

I hired several teams and we camped near a country school near Cullison, Kansas. That is where I met Nellie Curran. She was a teacher in that school. During a terrible windstorm, the school door blew open and she was unable to close it. I saw her trouble and went to help her, and then a courtship of Sunday night calls began. We were married in Lincoln and then to Sioux City and took the construction of the road for the short line now called the Great Northern form Randolph, Nebraska, to Covington, now called South Sioux City. I then followed this with the building of the Sioux City Northern from Garretson to Merrill, Iowa. I got as far as Doon that year and went to Lincoln to be married. We lived in Doon at the Bonney Doon Hotel, and Blanche was born there June 27th, 1890. When it froze up in the fall, we moved to Sioux City.

In 1892, I built the Leeds Street car line up the first hollow west of Springdale over the hill down into Leeds and through Krumman addition. After the company sold all the lots along this route they changed the tract to run parallel to the railroad track. During this year there was a big flood on the Floyd River and ten people were drowned and nearly two hundred houses washed away.

In 1893, I built the streetcar line four lines from Morning side south through the A S Garretson addition. Again the company sold all the lots and then changed the track. Then I graded Fourth Street and laid the car tracks and then I got orders form John Pierce, D T Hedges and A S Garretson to grade Fifth Street and lay tracks, which I did. They had 60 mules to pull the streetcar up Jackson Street on a cable line and an elevated line to Morningside.

Grading from Thirtieth Street across from Water to Jennings was my next city work. The lots on both sides of Thirtieth belonged to Pierce and Hedges and I graded them. They owned all of the North side at that time from Twentieth north to 42nd. I graded all the lots from 27th to 32nd street on both sides of Jackson up to the 29th with John Pierce built his fine home, now the Museum.

In 1895, I completed the road bed from Merrill to Sioux City. That year the railroad bought enough land for yards on the East bottoms. They built 160 houses on this property, sold them, and moved them for the purchases. The railroad let me contract for the moving since I had two house-moving outfits. In the spring of 1896, I got the contract for the grading out the Union Depot basement, located between Pierce and Douglas on Third Street. This dirt I hauled down to where I had moved the houses and filled up these old cellars. Then I shipped back to Doon and stripped a gravel pit.

Finishing this I took a contract for the roadbed for the railroad from Moville to Sergeant Bluffs. There is where I bought my first grading machine, and patent wagons. This work was followed by the building of a new yards and grade for the Illinois Central Railroad at Fort Dodge. The Illinois Central had a washout between Cherokee and Onawa with one-half the dump washed out. I filled this and then received a contract for the Milwaukee to build a road from Waukon, Iowa, to the ore mines seven miles from there. Then I filled a contract for the same Railroad form Muscatine to Ottumwa and filled all the bridges form Ottumwa to Kansas City, Missouri. Then they shipped me to Marion, Iowa, where I graded for a new yards. From there I went to Manning, Iowa, and built the road to Harlan; thence to Yankton where I shouldered the Milwaukee road bed to Elk Point.

In 1902, I built the yards at North Riverside, and I also graded for a new yards at Atkinson, Iowa, and then built the grade for the Burlington Railroad from South Sioux City to Homer through the Indian Reservation south to Omaha.

In 1904, I went to Mitchell, South Dakota, and graded the land for a new stock yards, then to Hawarden and shouldered and raised the grade and ditch to Elk Point. This was followed by a return to Yankton where I built the grade from town out to the asylum and the road from Yankton to Platte. The road from Chamberlain through the Black Hills and Rapid City was my next work. Then we moved to Javase, 20 miles this side of Mobridge and built the coast line from Java to the Missouri and then the yards at Mobridge. We built the road to Lemon and in 1909 we graded the railroad to Miles City, Montana. We then shipped to Bewdel, South Dakota, and straightened the line and shoulders from the road to Aberdeen, leaving some of the towns a mile from the depot. In 1910, we graded 80 acres for a fair ground and racetrack for George Lauren of LeMars. We then moved to Perry, Iowa, and took some double track work from there to Marion and then back to Sioux City to do some county work.

That winter of 1910, Nellie and I went to California to the World’s Fair. While there we visited the tractor factory to look at the implements. They demonstrated all the work the tractor would do and used a 60 H.P. to cut and pulled out a tree nine inches in diameter and said it would pull as much as 24 head of mules. I was using 18 head of mules to pull the grading machine. They sold me one of their best tractors for $5500. The freight to Sioux City was $350, but the company paid the expense of shipping for the privilege of taking it to Kansas City for display at the fair. When it arrived here in Sioux City, I put a short tongue on the grading machine and the tractor pulled it without any trouble. Then I bought nine more tractors and used them for hauling dirt wagons, pulling out trees, and other heavy work.

In 1912, there was a fire which covered three blocks from Jackson Street to Pierce Street on Fourth Street. I cleaned that out and pulled down the walls and did the same for the Mondamin Hotel fire at Fourth and Pierce Street in 1919.

I built 162 miles of county roads and 126 miles of state roads, among the road ten miles west of Dubuque to Clinton, around the Mississippi Bluffs by the way of Sabula, Iowa. This was the heaviest grading work ever let by the State. There were 450 thousand yards of solid rock and 220 yards of loose rock to handle beside 980,000 yards of dirt. We had three years to complete the job and finished four months ahead of time. During this job I suffered a double fractured of the right arm in a filling station at Correctionville, where we had stopped for gas-fell over the hose.

I then shipped by outfit to Murphysburo, Missouri, and took 12 miles of heavy work using two draglines and two grading machines and 10 tractors. We put the grade up in 20 months, completed and cleared the right of way. It was heavy timber and had to be grubbed out ahead of the draglines and machines. I then shipped back to Dubuque and graded 12 miles of county work and 14 miles of state work near Anamosa. I sold out in 1937.