Featured Markers
Duchesne Academy
In October 1881, Mother Margaret Dunne and three religious of the Sacred Heart opened a boarding school for girls at a temporary location on Ninth and Howard in Omaha. On September 1, 1882, Bishop James O'Connor sold Park Place, a 12-acre site…
Susan LaFlesche Picotte Memorial Hospital
This hospital is named in honor of the first Native American woman physician. Dr. Picotte (1865-1915) was the daughter of Mary Gale and Iron Eye, also known as Joseph La Flesche, the last traditionally recognized chief of the Omaha tribe. She was…
Cather Childhood Home
Built ca. 1876, this is the house in which Willa Cather lived from 1884 to 1890. She describes it in "Old Mrs. Harris," in "The Best Years," and in this quotation from Song of the Lark:
"They turned into another street…
Random Markers
The Sandhills
The Sandhills, Nebraska's most unique physiographic feature, covers about one-fourth of the state. The sandy soil acts like a giant sponge, soaking up rain and forming a vast underground reservoir. Hundreds of permanent lakes are found here.…
Sidney-Cheyenne County
In 1867 an Army tent camp was established near here to provide protection for Union Pacific Railroad construction crews. Three years later it became Fort Sidney, the nucleus for the town of Sidney, county seat of Cheyenne County. The rush to the…
Bellevue
Bellevue, gateway to the upper Missouri and the fur trade empire, is the oldest continuous settlement in Nebraska. This town was born, became important, almost died, and now in the 20th century, has been revitalized.
Fur traders dealing with the…
The North Bottoms
The North Bottoms neighborhood was settled by Germans from Russia beginning in the 1870s. During the preceding century they had colonized in Russia, attracted by offers of free land, military exemption, and political autonomy. In 1871, when the Czar…
Hall County Courthouse
Designed by Omaha architect Thomas Rogers Kimball (1862-1934), the Hall County Courthouse is an exceptional example of Beaux-Arts classicism and borrows on Germanic design sources. Constructed of brick accented with limestone, the building features…
Site of Hecla, Nebraska
When the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad (now the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe) reached this point in 1887, it built a siding named Hecla after a volcano in Iceland. A post office was established the same year, and construction of stockyards…
Featured Tours
Explore Nebraska History
A project by Nebraska State Historical SocietyExplore Nebraska History is a free app that shares the heritage of Nebraska at your fingertips. Learn more about the interesting stories and fascinating people highlighted by our Nebraska Historical Marker program. Travel across our beautiful state in person or via your device with curated historical tours. The stories provided in this app expand upon our historical markers with each point on an interactive GPS-enabled map that includes historical information about the location, images and media from archival collections and links to additional publications.
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