The Home of a Pioneer, on the Plains in Early Days

Drawn from Solomon D. Butcher’s landmark survey of Plains homesteaders, this real photo postcard was issued some two decades after the original exposure. An armed family poses with the armature of their life in Custer County, from mule-deer antlers set into the sod walls to the children’s bare feet. Postally used in 1910, the card demonstrates the image's transition from contemporary document to a memento of a foundational past, sent from one generation of Nebraskans to the next.