Stop 5 – Getting Water onto the Fire

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A fire engine is only as good as its water supply, and in the early days Nebraska City got its water from cisterns.

Cisterns were underground brick reservoirs, shaped like a tall cylinder with a dome on top, and each one held twenty-five thousand gallons. They ran along Central Avenue, at Third, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, and Twelfth Streets. The steam pumper filled the cistern nearest the river first, then pumped from that one into the next, and so on down the line. The system was finished and filled in January of eighteen sixty-nine. Later, a hundred-thousand-gallon cistern was added in front of the City Hall and Engine House. The cisterns stayed in use until the city built its water system with fire hydrants.

Hose carts arrived along with the steam engine. Early hoses were made of leather or stiff rubber and couldn't be folded, and that's why hose carts had reels.

And a word about fire company titles. The foreman was what we'd now call the captain. The engineer ran the pump. The pipeman aimed the nozzle and worked the shut-off valve, and the hoseman handled the hose.