NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/625084
54 NEBRASKAland • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2016 very great attention, and his garden and orchard have always been outstanding." The Pressey ranch must have become fairly well known in the years prior to Harry's first meeting with Purcell. In addition to raising their adopted daughter, Julia, Kate taught weekly Sunday school classes in their home, and Harry regularly hired out for help on the farm. Traffic on the Pressey ranch increased even further when Harry – in a stroke of creativity that falls squarely in line with the eccentricities of his father and uncle – cobbled together a makeshift gondola system for crossing the South Loup. He strung a cable line from the east bank to the west and built a cable car just big enough to convey himself across without touching the water. Though ostensibly he built it for more practical purposes, word spread fast among children in the area, who often stopped by for a ride across the river. "No matter what the conditions, the prospects, the circumstances, the home of H.E. Pressey seemed to many of us, in the old days, as an oasis in a desert of disappointment," wrote friend and neighbor Harvard Lomax. "And life seemed brighter, the road less arduous, the burden lighter from the effects of its optimistic atmosphere." Alone on the Ranch In the summer of 1924, that optimism began to fade. Kate, always so cheerful, grew tired. She couldn't finish a meal, could barely stomach a few bites. She felt nauseous. She lost too much weight. Come fall, her symptoms unshakable, she traveled west to Denver, where St. Joseph's Hospital diagnosed her with stomach cancer. She endured three months of serum treatments before returning to her husband on the South Loup, but the symptoms quickly resurfaced. A few weeks later, just before Thanksgiving, she and Harry returned to Denver. On Dec. 12, 1924, Kate passed away, Harry at her side. Afraid of raising their adopted daughter alone, Harry – in what must have been one of the darker moments of his life – returned Julia, now 15, to the orphanage she came from. Back in Custer County, the old Zimmerer house must have felt especially quiet to Harry during those next few months, now a childless widower. Nevertheless, he continued to work the farm, sowing seeds in the spring and harvesting in the fall. He nursed the garden and his trees in the orchard, orchestrating his multiple hired hands. By the spring of 1930, he'd made up his mind to donate a portion of his land to the state of Nebraska. Perhaps, living alone now, he missed the activity that once surrounded his property. Perhaps he felt the same civic duty that his family seemed to have felt back in New Jersey, where they held positions in municipal government. Perhaps, passing 70, he just felt old, growing fearful of being forgotten before he was gone. Either way, in May 1930, before the governor and a crowd of thousands, he deeded his first 80 acres. Thirteen years later, in 1943, he deeded the rest of his property, another 1,444 acres, to the NGFPC. The property included 60 acres of irrigated farmland, in addition to profitable hay and pastureland. In total, his donation was valued at roughly $50,000. Accounting for inflation, that's more than $687,000 today. Harry retained the right to live on the land until his death, in addition to a stipend of $1,000 per year paid for by the land's revenue. "Pressey park…is especially outstanding because of the fact that the land has all been donated by one person," wrote the Omaha World-Herald in 1944. "For many years his big desire in life has been to leave to Nebraska his own picturesque land so that with each passing year thousands and thousands of people may enjoy its scenic value as a picnic ground and recreational center." His health failing, he spent the winter of 1944 with relatives in California. He returned home in March, but like Kate before him, his time away from the ranch didn't seem to help. He grew worse. He called a doctor in Eddyville, who made a visit early in the second week of April, recommending he go to the hospital. On Tuesday, April 13, 1944, as he waited for the ambulance to arrive, Harry passed away. He was 85 years old. A Low Profile In the 71 years that have passed since Harry's death, the Pressey WMA has quietly – for the most part –established itself as a mainstay along the river. In 1959, it crept back into the headlines when Mel Steen, then director of the state game commission, publicly opposed legislation mandating the extermination of prairie dogs on all state-owned lands. Steen noted that Pressey Park was the only park left in Nebraska with a native prairie dog population. "We are not opposed to prairie dog control," Steen told the Lincoln Evening Star. "We are opposed to their total extermination on the only outdoor zoo in Nebraska where they are likely to survive indefinitely." When a group of Harry's heirs filed suit against the State of Nebraska and state game commission in 1961, the park made headlines again. The heirs – 16 in total – claimed H.E. Pressey, who donated his land to the state of Nebraska, stands next to a sign bearing his name at Pressey WMA. PHOTO COURTESY OF CUSTER COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUM