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Lincoln Sunday Journal and Star, March 28, 1948., twenty-three years later.

     “Ponca is in northeast Nebraska, near where the Missouri River rounds the corner bordering South Dakota and Iowa. About 1915 fossil remains such as shark teeth and turtle shells were uncovered there, and a large fossil fish, now in a Chicago museum, was blasted from the bluffs along the river. Local legends and tales seem to have started up after this event; Messrs Huse and Peterson's tale is the tallest. They associated their story with no specific site at Ponca but claimed that it had been lost. Their yarn tells of vast caverns, prehistoric skeletons, and gigantic fossilized animals beneath the northern part of Dixon County. It narrates the marvelous subterranean travels of ‘...Professor Jeremiah Perrigoue, who liked geology and liked to dig along the bluffs for fossils, minerals, and petrifications.’ In 1876, Perrigoue found a great hole or an abandoned mine shaft 85 feet deep. He went through a fissure in the rock about 150 yards, then turned sharply to the left. Below him he saw to his amazement a gigantic cavern, a room supported by enormous trees reaching to 300 feet, their leaves turned into a canopy of stone. In this ancient forest he found petrified worms, a gigantic bird, terrible reptiles, a pterodactyl, dinotherium, megatherium, plesiosaur, ichthyosaurus, and paleotherium. Some of these creatures seemed to have been engaged in a death struggle before their demise. Other features of the great cavern were a subterranean river and waterfall.

    “Perrigoue penetrated more than two miles from the entrance and spent more than two days before retracing his steps. Finally, ‘Near the entrance where he had enlarged the fissure he encountered the dread fire-damp, and to his utter horror he saw the gauze of his miner's lamp had taken fire and was shooting up flames. In desperation he tried to extinguish them and finding it impossible he hurled the lamp far from him and