Mark R. Ellis

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Mark R. Ellis | Legal Culture and Community on the Great Plains: State of Nebraska v. John Burley | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.2 | The History Cooperative

Legal Culture and Community on the Great Plains: State of Nebraska v. John Burley

State of Nebraska v. John Burley was the first criminal trial in Lincoln County, Nebraska, and the first criminal appeal reviewed by the Nebraska Supreme Court. The legal proceedings surrounding this case indicate that the early citizens of nascent Great Plains communities shared an understanding of the law and its institutions that allowed for the immediate implementation of courts, law enforcement, and jails. A shared legal culture derived from New England and Midwestern states enabled new communities to uphold traditions of law and order, even in the "wild and wooly" climes of the Great Plains frontier.

NORTH PLATTE, NEBRASKA, is one of those Great Plains communities—like Dodge City, Kansas, or Deadwood, South Dakota—that popular culture points to as an example of a once wild and wooly frontier town. Founded in the fall of 1866, near the confluence of the North Platte and South Platte rivers by the Union Pacific Railroad as it laid its tracks across the Great Plains, North Platte—during its infant years—was purportedly infested by thieves, thugs, and murderers of the worst kind. "At the close of 1868, and well into the seventies," wrote an early historian, "North Platte was a pretty tough town, and very indifferently equipped to enforce the law and maintain order. It had no jail, and on this account crime often went unpunished."¹ Another early description reported that North Platte "was made infamous by deeds of violence and disorder ... [and] the better element was powerless to enforce law and order. Neither property nor life was safe [and] murder and robbery were of frequent occurrence."² According to these views, North Platte was a lawless frontier community without a proper justice system to safeguard its citizenry. Fisticuffs, strong-armed robberies, shootouts, and lynching were simply part of everyday life, and families and respectable citizens needed to stay clear of North Platte and towns of similar ilk.

The image of a wild and wooly American West has been fueled for more than a century by historians—both amateur and academic—and various avenues of popular entertainment, including western dime novels, Wild West shows, Hollywood Westerns, and the 1950s era television Western.³ In the twenty-first century, Great Plains communities continue to perpetuate this image with tourist attractions and summertime events that pay homage to the wild and lawless "frontier" past. At Deadwood or Dodge City, tourists can visit "boot hill" graveyards where gunmen and their victims lay buried. At the annual "Wild Bill Days" in Deadwood, tourists can watch the National Cowboy Fast Draw Contest, and during "Dodge City Days," the Boot Hill Bed & Breakfast will provide them with overnight accommodations. In North Platte, thousands of visitors attend the annual Nebraskaland Days every summer, where they are entertained by staged gunfights and other activities from the mythic frontier past.⁴

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