POOLE in the Past...

...from the

Poole Still in Danger of Being a Midlands Ghost Town

By Al Frisbie
World-Herald Staff Writer

    Poole, Neb. - To most Nebraskans, this Buffalo County community is at best a small dot on the map.  A resident said that "if you blink you may miss us." A cluster of five houses and a deserted brick schoolhouse are all a passerby is likely to see of the town.
   What was Poole's main street is raw a deserted road- way past empty lots containing only the cracked concrete foudations of broken dreams.  The sidewalk which once fronted more than a block of store fronts is little more than a hard-surfaced pathway through a jungle of weeds.  
   Only one building stands - the brick structure that once was the State Bank of Poole.
   It's empty now - used as an election polling place and the site of an occasional township meeting. Down the graveled street is the last remaining establishment providing Poole with an identity - the postoffice. It is in a weather-scarred trailer crowned by an American flag.
   Poole was never pretentious, Eighteen miles north and six miles east of Kearney, it was established in 1889 and originally was known as Poole Siding.  [Pool's Siding - rrs]  Later It became Poole - named for a man who operated a ranch in the area as early as 1876.
   Poole was incorporated in 1910 and its population never stretched much beyond 100. In 1920, it counted 105 residents. There were 104 in 1930, 72 in 1940, 33 in 1950 and 19 in 1960. Preliminary census figures indicate Poole's 1970 population will remain at 19.

'Ghost Town'

   In 1960, it was one of 66 incorporated towns in the United States with a population of less than 25. Three other Nebraska communities were included in that list - Gross in Boyd
County, Darr in Dawson County and Dickens in Lincoln County.
   Poole, like the others in 1960, was in danger of becoming a plains state "ghost town." It still is. Its last general store burned to the ground five years ago.
   Poole is gasping for life but residents like to talk about times when the town bristled with activity.
   Glenn Stover remembers.  Now 56, be was born in Poole and, with exception of World War II military duty, has lived there all his life.
   His late father was the town's blacksmith, and his mother, Mrs. May Stover, 83, still lives in the house where Glenn and five brothers and sisters were born.
   Stover, a widower, for years ran the Poole general store which also contained the postoffice. Now he is a rural mail carrier. "We used to have a general store on the corner," he said. There was a grocery store, a bank, a lumber yard, harness shop, meat market, garage, a blacksmith and carpenter's shop and an implement store.
   He nodded across the street.  "The railroad used to run right there," he said. "We had three elevators, plus a depot and another implement shop."

Abandoned

   Foundations provide the only physical reminders of Poole's busier days. The railroad, a 22-mile spur, suffered major damage during a cloudburst in June, 1947. Bridges were washed out. In 1949, the spur which had been in operation since 1890 was abandoned.
   That was the second major blow to the village's hopes.
   The first came in 1931 when the State Bank of Poole - one of the few in the area to withstand the 1929 stock market crash - was moved, to the larger town of Ravenna six miles to the north. It became the Ravenna Bank.
   In the 1940s, Poole suffered a third loss. Its school, which has served kindergarten through tenth- grade pupils, began sending high school students to Ravenna. Later, the entire school was closed.
   The Poole School District, formed in 1890, was dissolved four years ago.
   Today the town has only three pre-college-aged youths.  Two are the children of Mr. and Mrs. Orville Solomon - 16-year-old Eulah, a junior at Ravenna High School, and her 5-year-old sister, Sondra, a kindergarten pupil.
   Mrs. Solomon is Poole postmaster; her husband is a machinist at a Kearney manufacturing firm. They rented on farm property near Kearney until deciding to buy a home in 1958.
   "I was born a mile south of here," said Mrs. Solomon, who has four older children. "We wanted to raise our children away from traffic. This is the place we chose. It's quiet and we like it."

Cheap Land

   Poole's other school-age child is 6-year-old Arlen Fritz, son of Mr. and Mrs. Arlow Fritz. The Fritzes came to town about five years ago because "there was an opportunity to buy land cheap."
   Fritz, 36, who grew up in the Poole area, operates a road maintainer for the county. He and his family live in a large trailer.
   "It's like a large family here," he said. "You know everybody and we all help one another."
   In leisure hours, the Fritzes watch television, play cards with neighbors, go into Ravenna once a week for groceries. Fritz participates in league bowling in Ravenna; Mrs. Fritz belongs to the Poole Women's Club, which holds once-a-month meetings at the homes of members.
   Life boring? "No, sir," said Fritz. "We don't have time to do all the things that need to be done."
   Generally, most residents relish the community's easy pace. Several are in their 70s and 80s and others are 60 or more. The absence of a general store is an inconvenience but a Grand Island- based truck brings grocery items such as lunchmeat, milk, bread and cheese to town twice weekly.
   Poole maintains a lighted diamond, each year supports a girls' and a men's softball team whose members are recruited from the surrounding area.
   For some, life is almost too quiet. Mrs. Edith Standage, 67, came to Poole with her late husband in 1946.

Too Quiet

   "At that time there were more homes here," Mrs. Standage said. "Sometimes I think about moving somewhere where there is more to do."
   Poole still has a few possessions of other years.  Among them: two hand-pulled fire engines of long ago, lodged in a cement-lined cave. A sign on one of them reads: "Last used in 1925."
   Mrs. Stover remembers the better days. "Poole was a nice community," she said. "It was a clean town where everyone was friendly. We used to have community dinners where everyone brought something - sort of like an indoor picnic.
   You know, I don't believe there ever was a tavern here.  The people just didn't want it."
   It was, she said, a strait-laced town. A city ordinance passed in 1924 made it a misdemeanor to participate in "such dances as the bunny hug, bear car, Boston slide, turkey trot, tango and other dances declared immoral and indecent."
   Now there are hardly enough people in town to dance. Poole currently has seven occupied houses inside its corporate limits, Two others still stand but are no more than hollow shells.
   Mrs. Stover sighed. "It's a little sad," she said. "Ten years from now I doubt that Poole will even exist."

The article was accompanied by photos (by Richard Yanda) that have since faded.. However, see the photo gallery in Poole, a Buffalo County Village of the Past index page.

• Fritz and fire-fighting equipment . . . Last used in 1925
• Stover on Poole's main street today . . . last general store burned five years ago.
• Main Street in the early 1900's . . . once there was a school, bank, railroad and businesses.
• Mrs. Stover and her scrapbook . . . "It's a little sad."

Back to Poole, a Buffalo County Village of the Past