Built in 1902, this is the last intact historical windmill factory in the United States. Cousins Louis and George Kregel began windmill production in 1879 across the street. After moving here, the company (now owned by George Kregel) produced Eli-brand windmills until 1941. Due to steel rationing at the onset of World War II, the factory became principally a retail and service center in the last decades of the company’s 112-year history. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
]]>The Atlas-F ICBM (operational 1961-65) was an important component of national defense during the Cold War. Twelve Atlas sites, one located half a mile west, were manned by the 551st Strategic Missile Squadron, Lincoln Air Force Base.
On November 22, 1964, a crew from this site died in a plane crash a mile south of here. The victims were Maj. Lee Craft, 1st Lt. Chester Higgenbotham, S/Sgt. Harold Hrenchir, A/1C Donald Moore, A/2C David Theriot, and pilot Maj. Robert Wilson.
]]>This cabin, one of Nebraska's oldest structures, was built in the summer of 1855 as the home of Allen B. Mayhew, his wife, Barbara Ann (Kagy) Mayhew, and their sons, Edward and Henry. John Henry Kagi, Barbara Mayhew's brother, lived briefly with the Mayhews before joining abolitionist John Brown in Kansas. In February 1859 Kagi helped Brown lead eleven Missouri slaves to freedom in Iowa via Nebraska City. During the trek Kagi narrowly avoided arrest while at the cabin. He was killed in October 1859 during Brown's raid on the Harpers Ferry, Virginia, arsenal to seize weapons for a slave uprising. Beginning in the 1870s, stories and recollections about this turbulent era credited the cabin as an Underground Railroad station. Edward Mayhew recalled Kagi once bringing fourteen black persons (possibly escaping slaves) to the cabin for breakfast. When the cabin was moved several feet in the 1930s due to highway construction, a "cave," allegedly used to hide freedom-seeking slaves, was recreated nearby. Legends connecting John Brown to the Mayhew cabin made it a popular tourist attraction devoted to the antislavery cause.
]]>After Nebraska Territory was organized in 1854, Dr. W. H. Goode came to establish Methodist missions. In 1855 Goode appointed Rev. William D. Gage to lead the Nebraska City Mission.
Construction of a church began at this site in 1855. It was dedicated in November 1856. Part of the original structure forms the south end of the current sanctuary. In 1861 the Nebraska Methodist Conference was organized at Nebraska City. In 1936 the conference designated this church as "Mother Church of Methodism in Nebraska."
]]>The stately, 52-room mansion was completed in 1903 by Joy Morton, oldest son of J. Sterling and Caroline Morton. The Mortons' first home in Nebraska, a log cabin at Bellevue, was built on their arrival in December 1854. Sometime between 1855 and 1858, Morton moved to Nebraska City and built a frame home, which was remodeled periodically. After his father died in 1902, Joy inherited the frame house and further remodeled and enlarged it as Arbor Lodge to its present size and Neo-colonial appearance.
For 20 years, Joy and his family used the lodge as a summer retreat. In 1923 he donated it to the State of Nebraska to be preserved as a monument to his parents. J. Sterling Morton and his wife Caroline were nature lovers, and it isn't surprising that soon after completing their first home on a treeless tract west of Nebraska City that they set to work adorning their surroundings with trees, shrubs, and an orchard. While Morton's contributions to politics, journalism, and industry were not inconsiderable, he is known to the world primarily as the founder of Arbor Day.
]]>This area of the Little Nemaha Valley was settled in the late 1850's. Many settlers were Northern European immigrants. By 1881, the Missouri Pacific R.R. had begun constructing its Kansas City-Omaha line through the area. The townsite was platted March 7, 1882, in a former cornfield donated by Clark Puffer, and named for Archibald A. Talmage, Superintendent of the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Talmage's location on the railroad made it a good shipping point for agricultural and mercantile products.
]]>Erected 1933 to commemorate the treaty made with the Pawnee Tribe at Rocky Ford on North Table Creek, 1000 feet east of this site, establishing permanent friendly relations with the Pawnee Indians and insuring safety, prosperity and happiness to the pioneer white settlers. Assembled under the Treaty tree and participating in the treaty were the following named white men, and the Indian chiefs whose names are on the foundation stones. James W. Denver, United States Commissioner; N. W. Tucker; Wm. W. Dennison, United States Indian Agent; Will E. Harvey; A. S. H. White, Secretary to Commissioner; O. H. Irish; Samuel Allis, Interpreter; J. Sterling Morton.
]]>The cemetery name is adopted from a nearby stream along which Native Americans once camped. George F. Lee donated the original land in 1866, with the first burial on September 10. Twenty-eight graves from family plots were reinterred here in 1868. The cemetery expanded in 1884, 1912, and 1990. The chapel, constructed in 1916-17, commemorates the cemetery's fiftieth anniversary. One notable grave is that of Barbara Kagey Mayhew Bradway, associated with the Underground Railroad in southeastern Nebraska before the Civil War.
]]>You are near the old freighting trail of the Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Cutoff. Prior to railroad construction, thousands of wagons transported supplies to Fort Kearny and other military posts throughout the West. The Mormon War and the discovery of gold in the Colorado and Montana Territories brought Nebraska City to prominence as a freighting center between 1858-1865. Early freighters used the Ox-Bow Trail which looped north to the Platte Valley. It provided abundant grass and water but it was overly long and often plagued by muddy lowlands.
Because of competition from other Missouri River towns, Nebraska City freighters sought a more direct route. The Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Cutoff, proposed in 1858 and first traveled in 1860, was first marked by a plowed furrow. Bridges and improvements were added when the famed Steam Wagon was brought to Nebraska Territory in 1862. This experiment failed, but the route continued to be called the "Steam Wagon Road."
Freighting from Nebraska City peaked in 1865 when over 44 million pounds of supplies were shipped. Construction of the Union Pacific soon marked the end of major freighting on this road.
]]>Permanent settlement in this area dates from 1846, with the establishment of old Fort Kearny on Table Creek. Nebraska City, founded in 1854, became an important depot for military and commercial freighting. Pioneer businessmen, such as S. F. Nuckolls, sought to attract freighting interests. In 1858, Alexander Majors, of Russell, Majors and Waddell, decided to use Nebraska City as the point of departure for shipping military supplies west.
Steamboats brought rapidly growing volumes of goods and numbers of people heading west. In 1865, it was reported that up to 40 million pounds of freight were shipped west from Nebraska City.
In 1860, a direct road to new Fort Kearny on the Platte was completed, shortening that journey by forty miles. Known as the Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Cut-off and also as the Great Central Route, the trail was originally marked by a furrow ploughed in the sod. Another name for this trail, the Steam Wagon Road, resulted from an 1862 experiment. That summer, a locomotive-like "Steam Wagon" attempted to haul cargo to Denver, but soon broke down and was abandoned.
With the building of the Union Pacific Railroad, overland freighting from Nebraska City soon gave way to railroad shipment.
]]>The increase in overland travel after 1842 resulted in the establishment of a chain of military posts across the West to protect the travelers. Early in 1846 the first of these posts was built by the army in this location near the mouth of Table Creek, an area explored and selected by Colonel Stephen W. Kearny. A two-story blockhouse was erected about 1/2 block west of here. Subsequently, a number of log huts were built as temporary shelter for the troops. The Table Creek site was not on the main route of overland traffic and relatively few emigrants passed the fort. The War Department, in 1847, selected a new site on the widely used main branch of the Oregon Trail. Fort Childs, later designated as Fort Kearny, was built near the Platte River, in present day Kearney County. The Old Fort Kearny area remained important as the beginning of a secondary route of the Oregon Trail, the Nebraska City-Fort Kearny cut off. Nebraska City was started at the site. The blockhouse was used as a printing office, justice court, jail, drugstore and butcher shop. A replica of it was dedicated in 1938.
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