After the Civil War, hostile Sioux and Cheyenne Indians retreated into the Republican River Valley as white settlement increased, finding an almost ideal refuge because the valley remained one of the great buffalo ranges of the American West until the 1870’s. Regular military patrols traveled the Republican on the Fort McPherson Trail, which followed the divide between Deer and Medicine creeks and entered the valley one mile west. The largest force on this route was General Carr’s Republican Valley Expedition of 1869, and after its successful campaign the region was clear of hostile Indians. In 1870 Isaac “Ben” Burton settled one mile southeast on a bend of the Republican at the One Hundredth Meridian, becoming the first permanent settler of Furnas County, and he and his partner H. Dice established the Burton’s Bend Trading Post. The post supplied necessities to buffalo-hide hunters, who soon destroyed the great herd, and although the community long remained known as Burton’s Bend, after the railroad arrived its name changed to Holbrook.