13th – We are now among the sand hills & the sod houses of Neb. At 3:00 PM a blizzard passed over our path. Stopped at Alliance, Neb for 15 Min. Got a gallon of coffee, cost 25¢. Made out of tobacco, I believe. At 3:15 the Cedar & the Fir began to appear. At Ardmore, S.D., we saw some prairie dogs. The train stopped at Edemontin (Edgemont) the evening. There I got off to mail a card & when I came back they had took the car of the train which I was on & put it on the other train. That put me on one train & John on the other one. I stayed on the first one till morning which landed at Billings, Mont. There I stayed till the 2nd train came along which was an hour behind the 1st one.
According to the Inflation Calculator, $0.25 in 1901 has the same spending power as $7.43 in 2019. When Jesse says they bought a gallon of coffee (as opposed to pounds of dry beans), it sounds like they bought it already made up and hot. Considering that a 96-ounce travel box of Starbucks coffee is $12.95, it’s safe to say that the price of coffee has gone up, but he might argue that his tasted like tobacco, so you get what you pay for!
Some of these towns that Jesse mentions like Ravenna, Alliance, Ardmore, Edgemont, and Billings were established by the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad laying track through the area. Ardmore became a ghost town in the 1980s after the train stopped bringing the town fresh, drinkable water.
