In September of 2011, a strange map arrived at the Library of Congress. It had been donated by Don Homuth, a former North Dakota state senator. Getting to Homuth, it had passed through the hands of John Hildreth, an eighth-grade teacher, who had received it from his grandfather, a former resident of Hot Springs, S.D.
By the time the map finally arrived at the Library of Congress, it was nearly 120 years old. Its age wasn’t what set it apart though. After all, the Library of Congress houses many maps that are older. What made this map so interesting was that it depicted the idea of a flat earth. But it wasn’t just any depiction of a flat earth.
It attempted to explain what is known as the Columbus phenomenon, the perception of a ship, that is coming over the horizon, first only being able to be detected by its mast, which gets taller and taller the closer it gets to you until the entire ship is in view. To explain this phenomenon, a fact most everyone knew about because of the horizon, he imprinted earth with an inverse toroid. Simply, his map looked as if a donut had been smashed into it, then removed, leaving behind its shape on the map.
When the Library of Congress received the map, it was only one of two known copies that had survived, and it was the only one completely intact. Since, a couple of other copies have surfaced, even though it had been spread far and wide by its creator. That creator, from Hot Springs, was Orlando Ferguson. A man who has largely been lost to history.
Orlando Ferguson
On November 6, 1846, on a farm in Perry County, Illinois, Orlando Ferguson was born. He would be one of five children born to Marmaduke and Mary (Davis) Ferguson. Orlando would only be three years old when his father passed away, leaving his mother and older siblings to take care of him and his younger sister.
It would be the second oldest son, George, who would step up to help guide the Ferguson family after their father died. As Orlando grew older, he would help with the work along their vast farmland, building up the family’s fortunes. However, while some of his siblings would marry and stay at the family farm, Orlando had other ideas.
On March 20, 1873, he married Margaret Ellen Douglass, who was 16 years old at the time, 10 years his junior. The two would stay in Illinois, helping with the family farm. In 1877, their first of seven kids was born, a daughter named Ollie E. Ferguson. Two years later, in 1879, a son was born, John O. Ferguson. Shortly after, they moved to Lamar, Missouri.
During the next 5 years, Orlando would try to find a place in society that was right for him. Leaving Illinois, he spent some time in Lamar Missouri as a hotel keeper. At some point, he would acquire land in Iowa, only to later be sold off. Eventually he would find his way to South Dakota, first to Canova, and later over to Howard in 1882, both towns being in Miner County. In both towns, he would be among the early pioneers settling in.
He wouldn’t settle in for long though. Orlando was driven to find wealth. And what better place than the Black Hills. In early 1886, Orlando started making trips to the Black Hills, for the purpose, as the Sioux City Journal put it, to look for wealth. It was in Hot Springs that he saw that possibility.
Hot Springs
After having investigated the Black Hills, Orlando found his ideal location in the southern Hills. At first, Orlando would start a career in the grocery industry, but he also began purchasing land; large amounts of land. And he wasn’t the only one. His wife, Margaret, would own just as much land, if not more.
Most of his land would be centered around Hot Springs, but he would venture out a bit. In Buffalo Gap, Orlando would become the owner of a saw mill, and later, through Sheriff sales, he would go on to acquire even more land in the area.
It was in Hot Springs though that his operations were largely centered. There, he took advantage of the Preemption Act of 1841, which allowed him to purchase public lands at a minimum price. Much of the land he and Margaret would acquire would be in the Catholicon addition, but additional land would also be purchased in Hot Springs proper.
While some of the land would be developed himself, he would sell other portions off, after his neighboring improvements increased the surrounding land value. In that manner, he became one of the areas early real estate agents.
It would be in 1889 though that Orlando made his big splash. Looking to compete with the Hotel Minnekahta, he began construction on his own resort, the Catholicon Hotel. He would quickly erect a bath house, which he used to promote the healing properties of the hot springs located there. Soon after, he would add to the resort by having a sanitarium built, as well as cabins for individuals to stay.
Doubling down on the medical benefits of his resort, he bought the compound oxygen treatment of E.R. Adams, which was supposed to help cure everything from paralysis to consumption. Orlando would attempt to add further legitimization to his “miracle cures” by claiming to be a doctor. While some would later say that the term doctor was used in regards to Orlando because of the healing that occurred on his properties, the truth was that he had gone as far as claiming to be a doctor of medicine in both his publicity material, as well as on official documents.
Orlando’s venture into healing proved to be exceptionally profitable. And it wasn’t just because of his customers. Orlando would be a frequent guest of the local courts, leveling lawsuits against many, as well as being on the other end of a couple of suits.
Legal Issues
Many of the legal issues that seemed to follow Orlando around had to do with his property holdings. Having bought the Catholicon lands for relatively cheap, after his work on the property, and the reputation he made for it regarding the health benefits, the value quickly sky rocketed. And it turned out that Orlando’s claim to the land wasn’t as secure as he made it out to be.
Before Orlando had bought the land, a man named John Dennis had owned it. Dennis, it would seem, had been defrauded of the land by R. Dixon, an attorney from Nebraska, who then sold it to G. C. and Hattie Hazellette. Becoming aware of this, Orlando set out to quiet the title. It would later be suspected that some larger scheme had been underway, but Orlando wouldn’t be indicted in such. But he did get to keep the land.
That wouldn’t be the last of it though. In 1892, a new lawsuit would begin that would span the next three years, eventually winding it’s way up to the state’s Supreme Court. In September of that year, Orlando would finally have the title to the Catholicon property, as it had been cleared by the U.S. court.
With the title now firmly in hand, and knowing his property was worth a fortune, Orlando sold it for $62,500, or about two million dollars today. He would retain an interest in the property, but that wouldn’t end up being enough.
Believing that the new owners hadn’t lived up to their agreement, Orlando forcibly retook possession of the property when the proprietors were all out of town. He would hold the property for a little over a week, until a court had ruled against him. He was forced to relinquish the property, but that wasn’t the end.
Armed with the claim that the new owners, the Catholicon Hot Springs Company, had not lived up to the contract, where they were expected to have completed extensive work on the property within a year, Orlando would appeal his case, while bringing about another lawsuit. He wanted the property back. To help his case, he once again said that the title had been transferred through fraud.
To further matters, in 1894, as the lawsuits were weaving through the court systems, Orlando and his wife would have additional papers served on the Catholicon Company, this time they asserted a vendor’s lien on the property for the purchase price plus interest. Part of the reason for the tactic was that it was a backup just in case the title couldn’t be found, and it did appear to be lost.
Finally, in 1895, the case reached the state’s Supreme Court. There, the lower courts ruling had been overturned. But by then, it no longer really mattered. The Catholicon Company, after years of lawsuits by Orlando and others, and unable to recoup their losses, had been ran down. The next year, the land they still owned in the area was being put up for sale by the county for non-payment of taxes.
For Orlando, another bath house had already been built at Siloame Springs. The work Orlando had started at the Catholicon Springs simply were moved to a new location. Once the dust settled, the two would be combined.
Flat Earth
While Orlando was working through legal troubles with his Catholicon property, he was also developing an idea that would gain him notoriety across the country. In 1891, he released his first work which claimed to prove that the Earth was flat. On the front cover of his new pamphlet, “The Latest Discoveries in Astronomy: The Globe Theory of the Earth Refuted,” was his first attempt to depict the flat earth. It would be this depiction, that was updated in 1893 as the “Map of the Square and Stationary Earth,” that is now housed at the Library of Congress.
For those in Hot Springs, the release of Orlando’s work was no surprise. He had been telling any local who would listen about his “theories,” but with money now rolling in, he had the means to mass print his ideas in a pamphlet, and he mailed it across the United States.
Some would find him to be a “crank,” but many in his own home area held him in high respect. It wasn’t that they necessarily believed him, but in the few years that he had lived in Hot Springs, he had become a pillar of the community.
In part, that was because of his real estate work. He bought up large swaths of land, and seeing that farmland was increasing in value, procured a great deal of it. While he would make a profit of the land he bought, it wasn’t exorbitant.
Besides being a fair businessman, he also invested heavily into the community. He became involved in local societies, and attempted to bring an electric street trolley to Hot Springs. With a few other local investors, the Hot Springs Street Railway company was incorporated, and shortly after Orlando was in talks with Brush Electric Company for an electric motor line.
Above all that, Orlando was a charismatic figure, who was an engaging speaker. After releasing his work, over 150 citizens of Hot Springs, with the K. of P. band, paraded to his home and serenaded him. Many were enthusiastic with his work, partially because it combatted long held, established beliefs. As the Hot Springs Star put it, “while men may not agree with Mr. Ferguson they will purchase his book and read what he has to say.”
The pamphlet was an instant success. In the first day alone, over 500 copies were sold. It was expected that it would end up selling tens of thousands of copies, if it got the proper advertisement. And Orlando made sure that it did.
Sending his pamphlet to news agencies across the country, his work would be featured in newspapers from the biggest cities in the country, including New York, Chicago, and Minneapolis. These articles would then be reprinted in additional papers. For more than a decade and a half, his work would receive mass attention.
Capitalizing on the publicity his work received, he also took to taking out ads in dozens of newspapers, making it simple for people to find and purchase his work.
Not all of the press he received was positive though. In many papers he was referred to as a crank and him being from “Hot Box.” A column in the New York Tribune, that was reprinted as far west as Montana, spent nearly two full columns ripping Orlando apart. However, even in most of the negative reports, some admiration was still given to Orlando. As the Fremont Tri-Weekly Tribune from Nebraska put it, “Whatever may be said of his theory it must be admitted that Orlando Ferguson, of Hot Springs, has an abundance of nerve—and gall.”
Even though many would recognize his views as to be false, Orlando would gain a sizeable following, and even inspire a number of imitators. In a big way, he would go on to inspire a “new scientific school,” which would then spawn several other branches. Some of these views that would be proposed were rather new, while others were refurbishings of ideas that had been abandoned.
One particularly interesting view that gained attention was of the idea that humans actually dwell inside the earth, on a smaller globe within a larger globe. That larger globe being the Earth’s crust, which was 100 miles thick.
To put it simply, his work was immensely popular, and it helped grow a new community that deeply distrusted science and established wisdom. His work would prove so popular that in 1892, just a year after he first published his work, he ramped up his printing to 5,000 pamphlets at a time. He also began considering publishing more of his ideas.
Black Hills Prophet
With his newfound success, Orlando decided to branch out a bit. In one attempt, he sought to acquire a collection of items which included a supposed “petrified Indian.” A few cowboys had claimed to find this petrified corpse near Wind Cave, and after getting the financial backing to exhume it, put it on exhibition in Hot Springs, where it was a big hit.
Two real estate men, George Bronte and Martin Van Buren Osmer, would pay to take the corpse on the road, and expanded the show with additional items. Orlando would then seek to buy this collection in 1892 for the price of $1,000.
He would never receive the corpse, which had been sold by Bronte to a few different parties. Not that it would have mattered much as interest in the entire show had largely died out. That and the corpse was most likely a fraud, and just one of many similar frauds that had been circulating in the Midwest.
Not shaken, he set off on another scheme, with claiming to be able to predict the weather. His first attempt was in March of 1892, with the Queen City Mail, out of Spearfish, labeling him “A Black Hills Prophet.”
Taking that title seriously, Orlando decided to go big. It would be the last time he did such. On August 5, 1892, in the Hot Springs Weekly Star, he predicted that the second coming of Christ would occur at the World’s Fair in Chicago, which would take place the following year.
His “prophecy” was spurned on by a Professor Ball, an Irish philosopher, who had written an article that made the argument that it would be more than 5 million years before the second coming would occur, and he based his view on the amount of time that it would take for the sun to extinguish.
Orlando would have none of this, especially since Ball didn’t offer any scripture as proof for his claim. For Orlando, he would go through various scripture in search of numbers that could be divided. Little consistency was shown in his method, and in the end, it proved to be nonsense as the World’s Fair came and went without any big ado.
The prophecy would soon be forgotten, and Orlando’s reputation would remain unscathed. Instead, he gained nation wide attention by releasing a new depiction of what he believed the Earth to look like. It was his famous “Map of the Square and Stationary Earth,” a revised edition of his previous map.
On this map, he quoted scripture he believed condemned the globe theory, and advertised his book that would explain his square and stationary Earth, while also claiming it would teach them how to foretell eclipses. He also took a swipe at those believing that the Earth was a globe because their view would be that they were “flying on the globe at a rate of 65,000 miles per hour around the sun and 1,042 miles per hour around the center of the earth.”
He would also rebrand himself once again. He was now Professor Orlando Ferguson.
Square World
Now with the claim of being a professor, Orlando focused much of his time promoting his idea of the square world. With his new map, a whole new wave of promotion started, with papers across the nation once again picking up on the story.
Orlando would also spend an increasing amount of time traveling and presenting lectures on his ideas. During these travels, his map would be gifted to a number of businesses, and post offices, where they would be prominently displayed. Building up his following, as well as his own views on astronomy, it soon become apparent that Orlando needed to start producing more written work.
At the start of 1896, he did just that, by releasing a new monthly newspaper titled “The Square World.” However, it would be short lived. It would be followed by a second book, based on a lecture Orlando delivered, titled “The Square World: Why People are Being Deceived on Astronomy and Religion.”
This book would receive much less attention than his first publication. The major issue being that these later publications simply rehashed the same information he had been presenting for half a decade. While these later publications would mainly be glossed over, what they did accomplish was to keep Orlando in the public imagination.
Over the next decade, Orlando would continue his lectures throughout the Midwest. Often he would be greeted with curiosity from the local papers, which in turn would grow to wider coverage as other agencies picked up on the stories. Every once in a while, his work would get a big boost when it was promoted in another work, most of which were focused on arcane ideas.
In 1901, Orlando would publish his last known work, titled “Six Hundred Commandments of the New Testament: The Lord’s Prayer, the Disciples’ Prayer, the World’s Prayer, In Action.” The book largely went unnoticed besides a citation in Samuel Ayres 1906 book, “Jesus Christ Our Lord: An English Bibliography of Christology Comprising Over Five Thousand Titles Annotated and Classified.”
Orlando’s fame would wane over the next few years, with him virtually disappearing after 1905. At the time he was still managing a bath house and sanitorium at his Siloame Springs, in Hot Springs, SD, but after years in Hot Springs, he once again sought new adventures.
He would move, for a short while, to Thermopolis, Wyoming, but eventually settled in San Diego, California. There he bought and ran the Silver Gate Bath House. His stay in California would be short lived. Troubles with asthma, as well as Bright’s Disease, would see Orlando moving back to Hot Springs in 1910.
The following year, on February 3, 1911, he passed away. His views would live on though. At least for some time.
Three years after Orlando’s death, in 1914, his works would become an important piece in a case focusing on the will of Edward S. Turner. Turner was of the belief that the world was flat, which was used as evidence for his mental incapacity.
In defense of Turner, Orlando’s newspaper, “The Square World,” was introduced in order to show that “very sensible men have contended that the earth was square and not round.”
But by November of 1939, when Margaret Ferguson, the wife of Orlando, passed away, his fame for his square Earth view had largely vanished. Instead, Margaret and her husband would be remembered as pioneers of Hot Springs, who were among the first to promote the healing qualities of the springs.
By the time of Margaret’s death, the Black Hills would once again be involved in discussions about the shape of the earth. But this time, it was the two Explorer balloons, launched between 1934-1935, which marked the birth of the space age, set the stage for the later manned missions to the moon, and captured the first photos of the curvature of the earth. More on those in our next articles.