Marcus Cain was one of a kind. The longtime Dawes County, Neb., farmer held only one patent, obtained in 1927. But over the course of his farming career, he designed and built dozens of new, unpatented inventions to make farming easier.

He farmed up to 4,000 acres of potatoes and wheat. He had an oil and gas refinery on his farm south of Chadron. Cain was friends with agriculture manufacturing legends such as the Baldwin brothers, who developed the first Gleaner combines. He had offers to work for some of the largest farm machinery manufacturers of his day — and turned them down. Cain was a farmer, first and foremost, although his career as an inventor came in a close second.

When he retired in 1971, he sold his farm and moved to California, but he had the wish that his unique collection of homemade equipment would one day grace the halls of an agricultural museum.

Dream comes true

Although Cain died in California in 1979, that opportunity finally came in 2016, when the Cullan family — who bought the land from Cain — donated Cain’s unique machinery to the Dawes County Historical Society museum at Chadron, and a new Cain Exhibit Building was constructed to house and interpret the historic implements.

Cain’s inventions were futuristic and forward-thinking. Some of Cain’s inventions already have disappeared. A gigantic articulated tractor with a front and rear engine was moved to a museum collection outside the region years ago.

Cain’s prototype self-propelled combine, which was considered the first of its kind in the nation, was dismantled for parts before the Cullans moved onto the Cain land. That’s part of the reason the remaining implements have become so important to the residents of Dawes County.

Tank retriever tractor

One of the Cain exhibit pieces that was stored on the Cullan land for many years and moved into the new museum exhibit hall was a 200-hp tractor that Cain built from a World War II tank retriever. The original retriever unit had tracks, but Cain found that the tracked vehicle tore up the light soil when he turned around on the ends of his fields, so he came up with a new drive system.

Built in 1965, the machine was painted in Cain’s signature orange color, with the name “M.J. Cain” painted on the cab. Cain built a 20-foot stubble chopper to reduce crop residue and make a better seedbed for drilling, long before no-till was widely practiced.

He invented a 24-foot combination self-propelled tiller, drill and packer with track drive and three engines — named “Marcine,” for Cain’s daughter — complete with rear field lights, which were considered innovative at the time.

All these pieces and others are now exhibited and interpreted in a 80-foot-by-60-foot Cullan-Littrel metal building on the grounds of the DCHS museum. The effort to bring the pieces to the museum was an entire community campaign, with local donations helping to bring the collection to Chadron for display.

The unique, one-of-a-kind Cain exhibit at Chadron, in many ways, honors not only Cain, but also farmer-inventors across Nebraska and the High Plains and Great Plains region. Learn more on the Dawes County Historical Society Facebook page or by calling the museum at 308-432-4999.