The Union Pacific's old passenger depot had been empty ever since a new depot opened in April 1918. The railroad allowed the old depot to be used as a canteen, and the Red Cross welcomed its first soldiers with small care packages on August 12. Nine units of ten workers were scheduled to stand ready to serve troops from 8:30 am unitl 10:05 pm daily. The canteen served troops as they headed to war in Europe and as they returned home after the war. According to the final report on August 8, 1919, the Grand Island canteen had served 57,890 service men at a cost of $3,429,37 to the local Red Cross chapter.
]]>Due to financial hardships, the former 80-acre Hall County fairground was sold in 1932. In April 1953 area farmers, ranchers, and civic leaders founded two organizations to establish a new permanent home for the Hall County Fair and to build a Thoroughbred horse racetrack in Central Nebraska.
The Hall County Agricultural Society included representatives from every district in the county, providing leadership and structure for fair operations. The Hall County Livestock Improvement Association was incorporated by thirty businessmen and farmers, who secured 80 acres of land from Gus and Emma Fonner and began raising funds to construct a 5/8-mile horse racetrack, paddock, grandstand, barns, and livestock exhibition building. Fonner Park's first agricultural cultural show, the Old Reliable Hereford Show, was held on February 2, 1954.
Since April 29, 1954, Fonner Park has been home to Central Nebraska's only Thoroughbred racetrack and the Hall County Fair. In 2010, Fonner Park became the new permanent home of the Nebraska State Fair.
]]>Grand Island's "Lucky Ten" families were announced in April 1935. The 20 adults and 34 children shared communal buildings including showers, restrooms, laundry, a canning house, and a roadside market to sell produce grown on the 160-acre site. Each family received a four-room cottage, small barn, chicken house, 7-acre tract, 2 cows, 100 hens, 300 chicks, and seed. Individual farmsteads, valued at $2,500, had 15-year payment plans. Unique to Grand Island was a 1936 Nebraska Supreme Court ruling that District 28 school could not refuse the admit the 24 school-age farmstead children. The Grand Island Farmstead Cooperative Association was dissolved in March 1939.
]]>Prior to this realignment, the Lincoln Highway entered Wood River from the north on 130th Road and passed through town on 9th Street before turning south at 140th Road and crossing the railroad tracks. The plan drafted by the State called for the highway to pass through Wood River on 11th Street, but local business leaders objected. Instead, the new highway ran one block south of 9th Street parallel to the Union Pacific tracks.
]]>Owners and tenants were given 30 days to vacate their property by April 25, 1942. The government retained barns and outbuildings for tool buildings, machine sheds, and warehouses. Property owners could move their houses with government approval.
The evacuation order affected both homes and livelihoods. While some farmers found land elsewhere to rent or buy, others felt they had no choice but to sell all their livestock and equipment. Two weeks after being served, one farmer advertised a "Hit by a Bomb Plant" farm sale.
]]>In 1942 flood waters washed out the dam, draining the lake. One of the final community celebrations on the lake that year was a two-day July 4th event with boating, fishing, picnicking, dancing, fireworks, speeches from military and government officials, and vaudeville acts from Chicago. Sand Krog was razed in 1959 to make room for U.S. Highway 281. In 1968 Hall County assumed ownership of the property and created a county park with a paved road that winds along the rim of the former lake.
]]>Hall County Sheriff Wedgwood received a telegram from W.J. Burger of Doniphan on November 27, 1887, informing him that half the town was in ashes. The previous evening residents of Doniphan reported hearing a small explosion. Upon investigation, they found nothing amiss and returned to their homes. A second, larger explosion 45 minutes later brought out residents who found the post office engulfed in flames. Without a local fire department, residents were powerless as the fire spread throughout the business district destroying the post office, bank, grocery store, millinery shop, butcher shop, and general store.
The sheriff found evidence of a botched robbery. Thieves had used explosives to access the post office safe, which held $200 in currency. $200-$300 in postage stamps, and registered letters. When the first charge failed to open the safe door, they used a larger charge. This blew the door over 15 feet and ignited the contents of the safe, leaving the thieves empty-handed. No one was arrested for the crime that caused $5,000 in damages. Doniphan's business district was rebuilt on the same site.
]]>Cairo (pronounced 'Care-Oh') began as a railroad town along the Burlington line. Agents of the Lincoln Land Company, a Burlington subsidiary, purchased the Hall County farmsteads of George and Henry Bussell in January and April 1886. Located 14 miles northwest of Grand Island, the Bussell land lay along the proposed route of the Grand Island and Wyoming Central Railroad. The land company began planting the new town in the spring of 1886. Several houses and businesses were built by the time the tracks were laid in June.
When the Hall County Clerk received the town's plat map in July, he noticed unusual names for both the town and its streets. Located on the edge of the Nebraska Sandhills, the town was named for the Egyptian city of Cairo. The streets had names from the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region, including Egypt, Berber, Thebe, Alexandria, Medina, Mecca, and Nile. Although the name suggests a desert, Cairo was promoted to prospective residents as a "beautiful little town...in one of the most fertile farming districts in the state."
]]>Seven tornadoes struck Grand Island and surrounding areas on the night of June 3, 1980. They were part of a supercell thunderstorm complex that produced eighteen tornadoes from Nebraska to West Virginia.
The complex approached Grand Island from the north during the early evening. It moved slowly south-southeast through the city at around eight miles per hour. All seven tornadoes struck within a three-hour period. One reached F4 intensity, leaving a six-mile path of destruction more than a half-mile wide. Two other tornadoes were rated F3.
The storm killed five people and injured about 200. It destroyed hundreds of homes and many businesses. Total damage was estimated at over $200 million. The event was also unusual for producing three tornadoes that rotated clockwise. This is rare in the northern hemisphere, where over 99 percent of tornadoes rotate counter-clockwise.
The disaster inspired a book and a made-for-television movie entitled ‘Night of the Twisters’, as well as tornado and engineering research. The debris from the devastation was collected here, creating a park for the people of Grand Island.
]]>Solon H. Borglum (1868-1922), son of Danish Mormon emigrants, was a world-famous sculptor. From 1885 until 1893, Solon ran his father’s cattle ranch located in the South Loup Valley just east of this marker.
The Borglums moved from Utah to Omaha and Fremont when Solon was a child. In 1883 his father, James H. Borglum, bought land west of Cairo, Nebraska, but moved the family to California, where Solon worked as a cowboy. After the family returned to Omaha in 1885, Solon briefly studied painting before taking charge of the ranch. He was only seventeen. While at the ranch Solon began to make sketches, including scenes of blizzards in 1891.
Solon’s older brother John Gutzon Borglum, sculptor of Mount Rushmore, visited the ranch in 1890 and urged Solon to take up art full time. Solon left Nebraska in 1893 to study art in California, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Paris, France, and gave up painting for sculpture. Many of the works that earned him the title of “Sculptor of the Prairie” depicted cowboys, horses, and Indians and were inspired by his Nebraska ranching experiences.
]]>In 1879 construction of tracks connecting the Union Pacific's main line at Grand Island with the St. Joseph and Western Railroad at Hastings provided a key link in a railroad empire controlled by New York financier, Jay Gould. The link freed the Union Pacific from the competition of connecting lines at its eastern terminus in Omaha by providing a route bypassing Iowa.
Like other railroads built throughout Nebraska in the 1880s, the St. Joe contributed to local settlement and development. In 1879 local pioneer William J. Burger platted the town of Doniphan midway between Grand Island and Hastings. The village and township were named after Col. John Doniphan of St. Joseph, Missouri, an attorney for the railroad.
After completion of the Grand Island line, the railroad was reorganized as the St. Joseph and Grand Island Railroad and for most of its history was part of the Union Pacific system. Construction of a Hastings to Gibbon cutoff in 1914 provided a shorter route to the Union Pacific main line, and use of the line through Doniphan gradually declined. It was abandoned in 1989.
]]>The first settlers of Hall County, Nebraska, nearly all of whom were German immigrants, arrived on July 5, 1857. They platted Grand Island City and established farms. The O.K. Store of Henry A. Koenig and Fred Wiebe, located near the Mormon Trail, was opened near this site in 1862. It was the first store in the settlement and it also served as the first telegraph station. During the Indian uprising of 1864 and 1865 many Platte Valley settlers fled but the Grand Island settlers remained. They fortified the O.K. Store with a sod stockade which sheltered 68 men and 100 women. To give shelter to 35 more persons, William Stolley built "Fort Independence" about two miles west. On August 22, 1865, General S. R. Curtis and his troops visited "Fort O.K." Impressed by the settlers' preparations for defense Curtis left a six-pounder cannon, which is still preserved in Hall County. Because of the fortifications "Fort O.K." and Grand Island escaped Indian attacks. In 1858, a short distance northeast of this marker, the first post office for Grand Island was located in John D. Schuller's cabin, which now stands on the county museum grounds.
]]>