Louis Crompton joined the English department faculty at UNL in 1955. While at UNL in fall 1970, Crompton taught the first interdisciplinary gay studies class in the nation. Later that same year, he became the advisor for the first UNL LGBTQA+ student group, the Gay Action Group. Crompton co-founded the Gay and Lesbian Caucus of the Modern Language Association in 1974. Dr. Crompton was a pioneer of gay studies, widely recognized for his scholarship, and a strong advocate at UNL until his retirement in 1989.

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From 1854 to 1867 the seat of territorial and state government was in Omaha. In 1867 the State Legislature appointed a Capital Commission to select a location for the new state capitol. Commission members Governor David Butler, Auditor John Gillespie and Secretary of State Thomas P. Kennard on July 29, 1867 selected the present site.

In 1869 John K. Winchell of Chicago designed masonry homes in Lincoln for each of the Commissioners. These showplaces did much to instill confidence in Lincoln's future. Of these three structures, only the Kennard House stands today. It is apparently the oldest house within the original plat of Lincoln and is one of the finest remaining Nebraska examples of Italianate domestic architecture, the leading American style from about 1855 to 1875, Nebraska's pioneer period.

In 1965 the State Legislature designated the structure the "Nebraska Statehood Memorial" and assigned responsibility for the memorial to the Nebraska State Historical Society. Thus the house stands today, a symbol of the confidence early Nebraskans had in their state.

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The Kingston Cemetery is located on the hill just west of this marker. Founded in the early 1870s, the cemetery was the final resting place for nearly thirty of Kingston's early settlers. In 1887 the Kingston settlement was moved to the rail junction and renamed Pauline. The cemetery was later abandoned.

Just northeast of this marker is the site where John C. Fremont's party camped on June 25, 1842, while mapping the route known as the Oregon Trail.

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In 1893 the Crystal Ice Company dammed a portion of the Little Blue River 1 1/4 miles north of Ayr, creating "Crystal Lake" for harvesting and selling ice. A huge storage and loading facility was built on the nearby Republican Valley branch of the Burlington Railroad. Horse-drawn scoring knives and long, back breaking ice saws, later replaced by power saws, cut the 16" thick ice into 9'2" squares, which were floated down a channel to be cut into twenty-five, 22" x 22" cakes. Ten thousand tons per season was the capacity. A large ice house was filled for the Hastings trade, and hundreds of carloads were sold to the railroad. This winter ice harvest provided a thirty-day income for as many as fifty workers. In the 1920s mechanical refrigeration ended the ice business and Crystal Lake became a private recreation area for picnics, dancing, swimming, boating, fishing, and skating. In 1937 the 63-acre site was purchased by the state and improved by the WPA. Silt eventually filled the lake, and in 1976 a $180,818 renovation of the lake and park was a project of the Ayr Bicentennial Committee. Crystal Lake State Recreation Area is part of the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission system.

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The most traveled of the overland routes passed this point on its way to the great Platte Valley, highway to the west. The Oregon Trail started from Independence, followed the Kansas River west, and then the Little Blue north into Nebraska. It crossed this divide to reach the Platte near Fort Kearny.

In the 1830's trappers and missionaries recognized the Platte Valley as a natural roadway. The first wagon train followed the 2,000 mile trail to Oregon in 1841.

An estimated quarter of a million travelers used this route in the twenty-five years after those first wagons. Moving slowly, only 10 to 20 miles a day on the three-month trip, thousands of hooves, shoes, and wheels pounded a wide trail into the prairie sod.

Oregon was an early goal. The '49'ers went this way to California. Settlers, stage coaches, freighting wagons, Pony Express riders, and military expeditions all used this prairie highway.

With completion of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1869, this route fell into disuse, but the Oregon Trail had earned a permanent place in our history.

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The U.S. Naval Ammunition Depot, known locally as "the NAD," was the largest of the navy's World War II inland munitions depots, occupying almost 49,000 acres of Adams and Clay County farmland. Construction began in July 1942; loading, assembly, and storage of ordnance continued until final closing in June 1966. By V-J Day in 1945, the NAD employed 10,000 military and civilian workers. At one point during the war the NAD was producing nearly forty percent of the navy's ordnance, including sixteen-inch shells.

Costing $71 million, the NAD had 207 miles of railroad track, 274 miles of roads, and 2200 buildings, including hundreds of igloo-shaped explosives storage magazines. The depot embittered farmers whose land was taken by the government, but it produced an economic boom as Hastings's population jumped from 15,200 in 1942 to 23,000 in 1943. A September 1944 explosion killed 9 workers, injured fifty-three, and left a 550-foot-long crater. The blast was felt 100 miles away and shattered windows for miles around.

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The Heartwell Park Historic District is significant as an example of a planned residential development. The Heartwell Park Addition was platted in 1886 by J. B. Heartwell and designed by landscape architect A. N. Carpenter. The idea of a designed residential neighborhood with landscaping and aesthetics was new to Hastings in the 1880s. The park was created in 1886, but the lots on Forest Boulevard lay undeveloped until 1919 and the Lakeside Drive lots were not developed until the 1940s.

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The Central Hastings Historic District began at this site in 1878 when Samuel Alexander, using his 160-acre homestead, created the first northern addition to Hastings. This National Register district physically documents the three major periods of growth that occurred in Hastings from 1880 through 1950. It extends approximately from 7th Street north to 12th Street and from Colorado Avenue west to Bellevue Avenue. The historic district includes 386 homes from the Victorian, Arts and Crafts, and Modern periods.

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From the early 1900s through the mid-1920s, summer circuit Chautauquas brought culture and entertainment to communities across the U.S. The Hastings Chautauqua Association constructed this pavilion in 1907. Local architect C. W. Way designed it to resemble a large meeting tent. Seating 3,500, it was the largest pavilion in Nebraska. Notable speakers here included William Jennings Bryan and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. The pavilion, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, was partially destroyed by arson in 1992, but was rebuilt in 1993.

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To overland emigrants the rigors of the trail began with the "Coast of Nebraska," the ridge of sandhills separating the Platte Valley from the open prairie behind it. Thousands of emigrants passed this way during the peak emigration years of the 1850s. Hundreds died of disease, principally of Asiatic cholera. It is believed that a grave near here is of one such victim. Of all those who died, only a few graves are known. On August 3, 1859, a surveyor noted the grave and its marker:

That marker, since destroyed, was of polished workmanship, unlike most trail gravestones. It is said her husband returned to Missouri, had the stone made, and brought it to this spot on the prairie. The people of the area have cared for the grave, and the land was purchased in 1958 and presented to Adams County by the Federated Women's Club of Kenesaw and the Adams County Historical Society.

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The Neligh Mills, built from locally fired brick in 1873 by John D. Neligh, was the first business and industry in the then newly platted town. Later owners and operators of the mill included William C. Galloway, Stephen F. Gilman and J. W. Spirk. Milling operations began in 1874 with two runs of stone. Roller mills were added in 1878, and all new roller mills were installed in 1898. Flour from the Neligh Mills was widely sold throughout the Middle West. Better known brands produced here include Neligh Patent Flour, So-Lite Flour and Crescent brand feeds.

A good mill was a major factor in the growth of Nebraska communities during the 1870's and 1880's. Mills turned locally grown grain into flour, cutting down on expensive long distance shipping. Mills with an ample water supply and situated on main rail lines were able to produce quantities in excess of local needs, and sometimes received lucrative government contracts with the Army and Indian Bureau or for overseas export.

In 1969 the Legislature authorized the Nebraska State Historical Society to acquire and preserve this mill as a symbol of our agricultural history. Its importance was also recognized in 1969 by entry on the National Register of Historic Places.

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A marker, 200 feet to the south, recalls the death of White Buffalo Girl of the Ponca tribe. The death of this child, daughter of Black Elk and Moon Hawk, symbolizes the tragic 1877 removal of the Ponca from their homeland on the Niobrara River to Indian Territory in present Oklahoma.

Treaties in 1858 and 1865 greatly reduced the size of the original Ponca Reservation, yet the tribe remained peaceful. An 1868 error in the Treaty of Fort Laramie ceded Ponca lands to their enemy the Dakota Sioux, resulting in eight years of repeated raids against the Ponca and ending with the forced removal of the tribe to the new reservation.

The journey to Indian Territory was plagued by muddy roads and floods caused by heavy spring rains. Most of the tribe suffered from disease and hardship. Several children like White Buffalo Girl perished and were buried along this route that became known as the Ponca "Trail of Tears." The people of Neligh provided a Christian funeral for the child and an oak cross was erected at the gravesite. Black Elk's last request was that the grave of his daughter would be honored and cared for by the people of the town. In 1913 a marble monument was erected and the grave has been maintained and decorated in memory of White Buffalo Girl and the Ponca.

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With the establishment of the Neligh Mill and the platting of the town of Neligh, a crossing of the Elkhorn River here aided farm-to-market commerce. This bridge, built in 1910, replaced an earlier span at this location. It is a pin-connected Pratt through truss, a mainstay of early Nebraska wagon bridges. It serves as a reminder of bridges' importance to the development of Nebraska towns, commerce, and industry. The bridge is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

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For more than ten thousand years the Beaver Valley and surrounding prairie, with their abundant water and wildlife, nurtured Native Americans. The Pawnee Indians, whose permanent earthlodge villages were a few miles to the south, claimed this area for hunting, fishing, and trapping.

On August 14, 1871, A. T. Coquillard, president of the St. Edward Land and Immigration Company of South Bend, Indiana, purchased 320 acres from the Union Pacific Railroad. A townsite called "Beaver City" was surveyed, but remained mostly undeveloped as settlement slowed during the grasshopper plagues of the mid-1870s. Beaver post office was established in 1872 at the sod house of Capt. Robert Hardy, one of the first settlers. In 1874 the post office was moved to the west side of Beaver Creek and the settlement was renamed Waterville.

The building of a grist mill in 1876-77 attracted settlers and businesses. The present townsite was platted and named St. Edward in honor of Rev. Edward Sorin, founder of Notre Dame University. St. Edward was incorporated October 6, 1884. It is the only town so named in the United States.

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Logan Fontenelle, an interpreter and Omaha chief, was born at Bellevue in May, 1825. His father was Lucien Fontenelle, a noted fur trader both on the lower Missouri River and near Fort Laramie, Wyoming. His mother was a daughter of Big Elk, noted chief of the OMaha. Logan, the eldest of four sons and one daughter, was educated at a private school near St. Louis, before joining the family at Fort Laramie in 1837. Two years later the family returned to Bellevue, where the father soon died.

Little is known of Logan's life for the next decade, but in the early 1850's he became recognized as a chief of the Omaha by both the tribe and the U. S. government. As both chief and interpreter he went with the Omaha chiefs to Washington, D.C. where they signed a treaty on March 16, 1854, selling most of their land to the government and restricting themselves to a reservation in northeast Nebraska. This opened the Nebraska Territory to settlement.

In 1855, Logan Fontenelle accompanied a party of Omaha on a buffalo hunt near here in present Boone County. The party was attacked by Sioux and Logan was killed, probably on July 17th. His body was returned to Bellevue, where he was buried.

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By the mid-1880s the Sandhills had become an important cattle-raising region. The extension of the Burlington and Missouri Railroad westward through the Sandhills in 1877-1888 made ranching more profitable by making more accessible eastern markets. By 1888 the Burlington had reached burgeoning Alliance, planned as a railroad junction and named by B & M engineer J. N. Paul. Material for building the Belmont Tunnel (about 30 miles northwestward), supplies for the Newcastle, Wyoming, coal mines, and equipment for grading camps on the line between Alliance to Newcastle were freighted overland from Alliance while it served as the Burlington's western terminus.

Locomotive Number 719, built at the Havelock, Nebraska, shops about 1903, was used for most of its half century of service on the Burlington's Alliance Division. Late in its career 719 was used on the Sterling, Colorado, to Cheyenne, Wyoming, branch line. Representative of the steam-power era of railroading, it was one of the K-4 locomotives, mainline passenger types, built at Havelock. The 86-ton engine, donated by C B & Q to the city of Alliance in 1962 and refurbished by Burlington Northern volunteers, is now located on land donated to Alliance by John D. Nielsen.

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In the spring of 1942 the U.S. Army selected a site one mile south of here for an airfield. The dry climate and open landscape afforded ideal flying conditions. Ample water, cheap land, and Alliance's new power plant, new hospital, and railroad division point were other attractions. Five thousand construction workers descended upon Alliance, population 6,669, creating a housing shortage. By July four 9,000-foot runways had been completed.

The 31,489-acre field's primary mission was to train aircrews of C-47 and C-53 transports and CG-4 gliders, along with the airborne troops they would carry into battle. The field contained some 775 buildings and housed 12,500 military personnel at its September 1943 peak. The 411th Base Headquarters Squadron, 403rd and 434th Troop Carrier Groups, 326th Glider Infantry, 507th Parachute Infantry, and 878th Airborne Engineers trained here before deployment to the European Theater. In June 1945 veteran troops arrived to train for the expected invasion of Japan.

The field was declared surplus in December 1945, and most buildings were sold. Part of the field was transferred to Alliance for use as an airport.

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A flat-topped hill to the southeast was named Box Butte by early cowboys and travellers. This area is part of the Box Butte Tableland, semi-arid short grass country that stretches far to the west.

Box Butte has given its name to the creek that flows near its base, a village, and the county where it is located. It served as a landmark for miners and freighters to the Black Hills during the gold rush of the 1870's. Box Butte City was founded east of here in the mid-1880's. A cluster of sod and frame buildings housed a post office, grocery and drug store, land locator's office, livery barn, hotel, restaurant, two blacksmith shops, and a cream station. A small sod church was built west of the village. The town died when the post office was discontinued in 1910 and only the pioneer graves remain.

Box Butte County was created in 1886 from lands in Dawes County. Heavy advertising campaigns by the railroads spurred its early growth. The Kinkaid Act of 1904 increased the size of homesteads from 160 to 640 acres and aided in the economic recovery of the county following the depression and drought of the 1890's. The landmark remains as a rugged memorial to those hardy pioneers who settled "Box Butte Country."

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Beginning in 1874 thousands of freight wagons and stagecoaches passed here along the Sidney-Black Hills Trail. The route first supplied the Sioux at Red Cloud Agency on the White River and the troops at adjacent Camp Robinson. The southern terminus of the trail was at Sidney, Nebraska, on the Union Pacific Railroad. The 1874 discovery of gold in the Black Hills soon gave the trail new importance. Within two years it had been extended to Deadwood and other settlements in the Black Hills. Until about 1880 much of the freight for these mining camps was shipped from Sidney over this route. The peak 1878-1879 trade was estimated at more than twenty-two million pounds.

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The site of Hemingford was first settled by Canadian immigrants in the summer of 1885. A town company was organized in 1886 and land was sold to the Lincoln Land Company which formally platted the townsite. The cluster of frame and sod buildings was named in honor of Hemmings Ford, the Settlers' former home.

Much of Hemingford's early history involved the location of the Box Butte County seat. After the county was created from southern Dawes County in 1886, the courthouse was built in rival Nonpareil. Later, in an 1890 election, Hemingford secured the prize with the backing of the Lincoln Land Company which wished to promote the community's growth. County offices remained here until 1899 when voters designated Alliance the permanent county seat in still another bitterly-fought election. The courthouse was moved on the Burlington railroad from Hemingford to Alliance.

This area became noted for the production of alfalfa seed and potatoes. In 1930, 1,893 carloads of potatoes were shipped from Hemingford and the town was known as the "Potato Capital of the World". Today Hemingford remains an important agricultural center for the northern panhandle.

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On this day the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Pacific Ocean camped on the bank of the Missouri River at the base of a river landmark near here, now called The Tower. Clark wrote, "Capt Lewis & my Self walked up to the top which forms a Cone and is about 70 feet higher than the high lands around it." Nearby they "discovered a Village of an annamale the french Call the Prarie Dog...the Village of those animals Covs. about 4 acrs of Ground on a Gradual decent of a hill and Contains great numbers of holes on the top of which those little animals Sit erect make a Whistleing noise and whin allarmed Slip into their hole." They "attempted to dig to the beds of one of thos animals, after diging 6 feet, found by running a pole down that we were not half way to his Lodges." They finally "Cought one a live by poreing a great quantity of water in his hole."

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On August 3, 1944, a C-47 transport carrying twenty-eight men of the U.S. Army Air Forces crashed in a ravine six miles southwest of Naper during a severe storm. There were no survivors. It was the largest single military air disaster in Nebraska history. The plane was in flight from the Bruning, Nebraska, Army Air Field to Pierre, South Dakota, where the men would complete gunnery training before going overseas. A monument in nearby Knollcrest Cemetery honors their sacrifice.

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Lakeland High School was constructed 20 miles south of this site by ranchers from several rural school districts during the summer of 1934. School began that September with 11 students. Constructed of prairie sod, with a sod roof supported by pole rafters, this two-room building housed the classroom and living quarters for the teacher. Outbuildings...two toilets and barn for the students' horses..were also built of sod. The rooms were heated by "prairie coal" (cow chips) picked up by teachers, students and parents.

Altogether 33 students attended Lakeland, with 11 receiving high school diplomas. Some students rode horseback up to ten miles; others stayed with families and helped with chores for their room and board. With Nebraska Department of Education approval and through the efforts of the county superintendent and school patrons, students in the sparsely populated sandhills of southern Brown County received their higher education during the hard times of the 1930s.

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Ainsworth Army Air Field, completed on November 30, 1942, was a satellite of Rapid City Army Air Field and under command of the Second Air Force. The field was one of eleven Army Air Force training bases built in Nebraska during World War II.

The 2,496-acre field included three 7,300 x 150-foot concrete runways, a hanger, warehouse, repair and machine shops, link and bomb trainers, Norden bombsite vaults, and barracks for over 600 officers and enlisted men. The base's primary mission was to provide proficiency training for P-39 and P-47 pilots of the 364th and 53rd fighter squadrons, and for B-17 crews of the 540th and 543rd bombardment squadrons before deployment to the European Theater of Operations. Aircraft camouflage experiments were also conducted on the site.

The airfield closed in 1945 and the following year the city of Ainsworth received a U.S. Government revocable license for commercial aircraft operations on the field. In 1948 the War Assets Administration declared the property surplus, and the city of Ainsworth received title to the airfield for use as a municipal airport.

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The Lincoln Highway Association was founded in 1913 to promote a transcontinental automobile route from New York City to San Francisco. Dedicated on October 31, 1913, the route was marked by the letter "L" within red, white, and blue bands painted on telephone poles or signs.

The association conceived the Seedling Mile program to demonstrate the use of concrete as a roadway surface, including projects in Buffalo County and Hall County in Nebraska. The Kearney Commercial Club raised funds to construct a Seedling Mile on West 24th Street from present-day 19th Avenue to 30th Avenue, formerly a dirt road. The Kearney Daily Hub of November 5, 1915, described the completed project: "The road is amply wide enough to make possible the passage of two loaded hayracks without interference."

From 1947 to 1987 this location was the site of the Hammer Motel, famous for its sign topped by a giant hammer and three supporting poles made to look like nails. The building then served as student housing for the University of Nebraska at Kearney until 1995, when it was razed.

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In 1881 Sylvester Bearss constructed Blue Mills just east of here on Wood River, so-named for a blue clay outcropping. A 30.5-inch Leffel turbine rated at 30 horsepower ran the mill with water impounded by an earth and brush dam. Fifty barrels of flour could be produced every 24 hours. When the mill was rebuilt after burning in 1892, a concrete dam and steam engine were installed. From about 1908 to 1920 Sylvester's son Guy Bearss owned the mill, which featured "Star Patent" and "Snow Flake" brand flour. Bearss sold the mill to Warren Ewell a few months before it was again destroyed by fire on October 31, 1920. Ewell was convicted of arson; the mill was not rebuilt.

Until about 1910 the mill pond and environs was a popular recreation area operated by Charles Nelson and known as Glenwood Park. Ice harvested from the pond was stored in a huge ice house nearby for summertime use in Kearney. In 1944 the land where the mill once stood was acquired by the Lawrence and Violet Richter family.

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Elm Creek siding was established in August 1866 during construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. The nearby creek provided both water and timber for the railroad's locomotives. By 1872 a school-church building, a saloon-restaurant, a store, and a post office formed the nucleus of a town. The railroad brought settlers to the area, many of whom were Irish emigrants and railroad workers. They acquired homesteads and timber claims from the government or purchased land from the railroad.

About 1880 the Union Pacific constructed a depot one mile to the east of the original town and the village soon followed in 1883. Elm Creek was incorporated on January 12, 1887, and boasted a population of 300. In 1906 the village survived a major fire which destroyed fourteen buildings on Front Street.

Elm Creek's location in the fertile Platte Valley helped make it an agricultural center for sugar beets, alfalfa, livestock, and corn. In its centennial year of 1987 the population was 862.

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Gibbon, on the old Mormon Trail, was the site of a unique experiment in homestead colonization. Originally conceived as a financial venture by Colonel John Thorp of Ohio, the Soldier's Free Homestead Colony was responsible for bringing the first homesteaders to the region. Traveling by Union Pacific, which had reached this point in July 1866, the first group of colonists, representing 80 families, arrived in Gibbon on April 7, 1871. Thorp had advertised for colonists, charging a membership fee of $2.00, with which they received reduced railroad rates to Gibbon, where it was expected that the Civil War Veterans would purchase railroad land and take homesteads, thus increasing the value of other nearby railroad lands. When the first colonists arrived at Gibbon siding, named for Civil War General John Gibbon, the only building was a small section house, and, until sod or frame homes could be built, they lived in railroad box cars. Later arrivals increased the original colonists to 129 families from 15 states, all but a few being Union veterans. The settlers' first view of the area was not encouraging as a prairie fire had recently swept over the region, leaving charred desolation in its wake. Two days after their arrival, a two-day blizzard struck the area. It is a tribute to the perseverance of these hardy pioneers that only one colonist failed to file a homestead claim.

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Gibbon, near here, was the site of a unique experiment in homestead colonization. The Soldiers' Free Homestead Temperance Colony was responsible for bringing the earliest settlers, mostly Union veterans, to this locality. Traveling via the Union Pacific Railroad, the first group arrived April 7, 1871, when the only building was a small section house. They lived in railroad boxcars until sod or frame homes could be built. Their first view of the area was not encouraging, since a prairie fire had recently swept the region, and two days after their arrival a blizzard struck. Still, of 129 families only one failed to file a homestead claim. As you travel east, you will parallel the Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Cut-off which joined the main Overland Trail near here. This freighting trail, in operation from about 1860-1869, was designed to speed travel between the Missouri River, frontier military posts, and Denver. It offered a more direct route than the earlier Ox-Bow Trail which looped north to the Platte Valley. Freighting over the Cut-off peaked in 1865 when 44 million pounds of supplies were shipped west from Nebraska City.

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James E. Boyd settled near here in 1858 and by 1860 operated a trail ranche supplying travelers on the Platte Valley Overland Route (Mormon Trail). The ranche included 200 acres of corn and barley. Nebraska Centre Post Office was here until if was discontinued in 1868. The Union Pacific Railroad, reaching here in 1866, ended the need for ranches. Soon after, Boyd moved to Omaha, was elected mayor and in 1891 became governor of Nebraska.

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