Local

The old Webermeier place is pictured, located 6 miles east and 1/2 mile north of Holyoke. John W. Webermeier and his wife Katie moved there in 1898. They lived in a sod house connected to a small three-room frame house until they built a two-story house in 1910. John and other area farmers fought a prairie fire in 1906 or 1907. The fire was caused by sparks from a Burlington train. No homes burned, but the prairie was blackened as far as Pleasant Valley. John worked so long that he was exhausted and sick with rheumatism and stayed in bed for several months afterward. — Source: Phillips County Museum