Hart of Homer. In the summer of 1920 Nebraska Governor Sam McKelvie accepted his application, and Hart received his official commission as Prohibition agent.

He wasted no time. Within weeks he raided and destroyed five stills near Martinsburg, Neb. In late October, after learning that much illicit booze was coming from stills in and around Randolph, Neb., Hart went there disguised as a laborer, pinpointed the stills and led a raid that netted 20 men, including some of Randolph’s foremost citizens.

Hart followed up that success with a raid on bootleggers in Spencer, Neb., discovering to his amazement that one of the suspects he took into custody was the town’s marshal. Before he could turn in the man, another local officer sought to arrest Hart on a charge of disturbingthe peace, sparking an angry verbal exchange. The affair left him with a strong distrust of local enforcement officers, many of whom, he believed, operated in partnership with moonshiners. On December 17, 1920, Hart and other Prohibition agents, acting on incriminating evidence Hart had turned up while again investigating undercover, raided stills in Schuyler, 70 miles west of Omaha.

By the spring of 1921 these exploits had gained him statewide fame. The Homer Star trumpeted that their hometown lawman was “becoming such a menace in the state that his name alone carries terror to the heart of every criminal.” Officials at the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs took note of the growing celebrity of this daring young Prohibition agent and tapped him for an even more challenging and potentially