The future president of the Union Pacific was the fifth of nine children born to William and Elizabeth Jeffers. Not all the children lived in the house at the same time, some having grown up and moved away before the later arrivals.
There may have been an attached annex used as a summer kitchen or sleeping quarters at some time. Pictures show a lean-to shed attached to the building later, when it was used as storage for used car parts.
Jeffers' mother died in 1902 and his father in 1909. His father's will provided that the three daughters still at home could continue living in the house until they died or married. Two were married within a few years and the third died in 1924.
In 1939, the trustee of the William Jeffers Sr. estate petitioned the county court for permission to sell the property to Socony Vacuum Oil Co. for $600 plus back taxes and assessments. The petition stated that amounted to a sale price of $4,300 or more. It also stated the purchaser would allow removal of the house "to one of the city parks …to be there located as a memorial."
Jeffers by then was president of the Union Pacific. He offered to donate the house to the city as a memorial to his mother and pay the expense of moving and repairing the building. That was done, probably sometime between July 1939 and March 1940. The house was located in the southwest part of Cody Park, south of the present tennis courts.
A bronze plaque near the front door identified the house as the birthplace of Jeffers, but nothing more was done with it until 1964, when a youth group from First Christian Church led by Glenn and Shirley Dean undertook to renovate the building and operate it as a museum. The junior-high age young people, with support from the Lincoln County Historical Society, opened the building in August 1964 and staffed it during summer months in 1965 and 1966. But when the Deans moved from North Platte in 1967 no new sponsors were found, and the project was abandoned.
The building was a target for vandals and was eventually moved to a more secure location near the railroad display in the park, surrounded by a high fence and used as park department storage.
In 2000, it was moved to the Lincoln County Historical Society Western Heritage Village. The City of North Platte paid the cost of moving and restoring the building with the Historical Society agreeing to maintain it.
Submitted: February 11, 2022, by Cosmos Mariner of Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Database Locator Identification Number: p638613
File Size: 3.214 Megabytes
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