This week marks the 150th anniversary of a famous hunting trip that may have helped draw attention to a painting thought to have been inspired by an earlier buffalo hunting trip that happened in Nuckolls County.

But like many of the Old West stories, not everyone agrees about where it happened or even when.

For example Robert Landon, a man personally known by people I have known, said he raised Calamity Jane in a abin along the Little Blue River northwest of Oak. Some historians claim Calamity Jane was raised in Missouri.

Landon contended he raised her from a baby. As a young woman she left Nuckolls County and ran off with a man known as “Wild Bill Hickock.” Supposedly Wild Bill was on the run after being involved in a shootout near Fairbury.

It was in mid-January, 1872, that the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia and five of his associates along with their American guides and support staff went buffalo hunting in Nebraska.

The hunting party was guided by none other than Buffalo Bill Cody and included two famous American military men, Philip Sheridan and George Custer. A separate story in this issue shares more information about the hunt and the famous paintings associated with it. While we would like to claim the hunt happened in Nuckolls County, the grand duke most likely did not visit here. A Nuckolls County historian, the late Charlotte Clabaugh, said the famous buffalo hunt painting some attribute to Duke Alexis’ hunt was based on the artist’s experiences while hunting buffalo in Nuckolls County in 1863.

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As I entered the newspaper office last Thursday morning and began to take off my wraps, a co-worker marveled that I had survived the two-block walk on a morning the weather service was reporting the windchill to be a minus something. Had the streets not been covered with a light layer of ice and snow, I probably would have ridden my bicycle.

While I will walk or ride a bicycle for short trips around town during the winter, the cold limits the distance I am willing to travel. And I have modern cold weather gear. How did a hunting party survive during a windswept Nebraska winter in 1872 or before?

The recorded stories don’t indicate the presence or absence of snow but if there was, how, without rubber boots, did they keep their feet from freezing?

I remember the stories my grandparents told about walking through the snow a mile or two to school and how their shoes and stockings were soaked by the melting snow. Fortunately for them, there were heated buildings at either end of their walk. In those shelters, they could dry their clothes and warm up by the fire.

My grandparents told me stories about how cold their childhood homes got when the fires went out during the night and the water buckets froze. I don’t know how they kept warm and it would have been even more challenging for the hunting party that was camping out.

My father told about the winter his bed was located on an open porch. Some mornings, he would awake and have to shake the newly fallen snow off his bed covers. That experience taught him put covers both underneath and on top of his sleeping place.

I have tried to apply that principle to my own sleeping arrangements.

I have an electrically heated blanket between me and the mattress. Then for covers I have a sheet, a thermal blanket, a conventional blanket, two wool blankets and a comforter. To top it all off, I have an opened sleeping bag.

I wasn’t comfortable last week until I added the sleeping bag. And my sleeping quarters are inside a house with an automatic furnace. Nightime temperature doesn’t drop below 60 degrees.

I don’t see how the hunters carried enough blankets.

I suspect the hunting party’s support staff may have gathered buffalo chips which were used to fuel in-camp bonfires. But my experience with bonfires is that while the side facing the fire is burning hot, the back side and feet are still freezing.

And what did they do when not in camp? On winter days when I rode a horse to country school, I had lighter-fluid fueled pocket warmers.

My grandparents used warm bricks as bed warmers. My mother preferred a hot water bottle to the warm bricks.

Now, when traveling in the winter time, I carry little packets of a chemical which can be opened to create warming heat should my vehicle become stalled.

When we used an uninsulated cargo van to transport papers between the printing plant and post offices, our winter survival gear included a portable heater that burned lantern fuel. I still have the heater hanging in the garage but I no longer have fuel for it.