The name Dana is a poetic reference to Denmark, homeland of the immigrants who founded the college. The institutions worked together until Trinity ultimately merged with Wartburg Seminary in Iowa. Dana served as a four-year liberal arts college affiliated with the Lutheran Church for over 125 years. At its peak, Dana College enrolled over 1,000 students from across the United States and across the globe. Its rich academic and cultural heritage made a significant impact on the region, yet fiscal challenges at the turn of the 21st Century led to its closing in 2010.
]]>The company’s operations grew with its reputation, opening nurseries in Omaha, Colorado Springs, and Denver. Locally, the nursery employed more than 100 people, including a large number from the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.
The nurseries supplied much of the original landscaping for the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln and for the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha. The nursery’s honors ranged from winning a statewide ‘big tree’ competition in 1963 to winning the Best Fruit Display at the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris. Marshall Nurseries may be best known for the creation of the Marshall Seedless Green Ash tree (Fraxinus pennsylvanica 'Marshall'). For many years the Marshall Ash was the most common green ash cultivar in the United States.
Marshall Nurseries closed in 1994, but its legacy lives on through the lives it touched and the trees it planted.
]]>About 3 a.m. on December 5, 1932, Fort Calhoun marshal Albert Suverkrubbe was shot while trying to apprehend two men fleeing Kruse's Red and White Grocery at 106 S. Fourteenth Street. Suverkrubbe died from his wounds nine days later, leaving his wife, Frances, and two young sons. He was the only Washington County law enforcement officer to lose his life in the line of duty during the county's first 152 years (1855-2007). He made the ultimate sacrifice to keep the city safe.
]]>Founded in 1870 by Israel Swihart, the cemetery was named for his wife, Mary Brewster Swihart. Those buried here include three Civil War veterans, and several children who succumbed to the harsh conditions of life on the Great Plains. The cemetery is also the eternal resting place for persons unknown, whose grave markers have been ravaged by time and the elements. It serves as a memorial to the sturdy pioneers who lived and died while making a home on the Nebraska prairie.
]]>On August 3 Lewis and Clark held a council with the Oto and Missouria Indians at a site they named "Council Bluff," near present Fort Calhoun, Nebraska. It was the first of many councils they would hold on their journey to the Pacific Ocean. Following the council, the explorers moved upriver, camping south of today's community of Blair. Besides describing the council, Clark's journal notes the merits of "Council Bluff" as a location for "a Trading establishment & fortification." In 1819 the army established Fort Atkinson. From the Indians and "Mr. Faufong, the interpeter," they learned that it was a 25-day journey to Santa Fe.
On August 4 the party camped at a site north of Blair. Clark was concerned over the disappearance of Private Moses B. Reed. Reed had asked permission to return to the previous night's camp to get a knife he left behind, but it was only a pretext to desert. He was captured two weeks later and dishonorably discharged from the army.
]]>On July 30 the explorers arrived at the bluff where Fort Atkinson would be built less than two decades later. Clark wrote, "The Situation of this place which we Call Council Bluff which is handsom ellevated a Spot well Calculated... for a fort to Command the Countrey and river the low bottom above high water & well Situated under the Command of the Hill for Houses to trade with the Natives." Four days later the Oto Indians, who lived in a village along the Platte River, came to the Lewis and Clark camp for a council. Captain Clark "mad up a Small preasent for those people in perpotion to their Consiqunce also a package with a meadile to accompany a Speech for the Grand Chief after Brackfast we collected those Indians under an orning of our Main Sail... Delivered a long Speech to them expressive of our journey and the wirkes of our Government, Some advice to them and Directions how They were to Conduct themselves."
]]>Traditionally known as the Cuming City Cemetery, this eleven-acre tract of land was set aside in 1976 primarily as a preserve for native vegetation. Never plowed, this prairie looks much like it did to the Indians and to the first white men who settled Nebraska in the 1850's. Grasses such as big and little bluestem, Indian grass, and side-oats grama still grow here. Now owned by Dana College, the site was acquired with the assistance of the Nature Conservancy and the Cuming City Cemetery Association.
Part of this plot is reserved as a burial ground for the descendants of Lewis M. Kline, pioneer newspaperman who founded Cuming City in 1855. By 1857 the town boasted 53 homes, 3 stores, and 3 hotels. It disappeared in the 1870's, when most of its citizens moved to Blair on the new railroad. The main north-south street of the old town site of Cuming City is now U.W. Highway 73, 1 1/4 miles southeast of here. The Kline family, which had its first burial here in 1857, donated this acreage to Cuming City for a cemetery. Many of those buried here were later removed to the Blair Cemetery where maintenance is provided.
]]>Religious institutions have played an important role in the history of Nebraska. During the frontier period, churches fulfilled both the spiritual and social needs of the early inhabitants. The Congregational Church was one of Nebraska's pioneer denominations. The Reverend Reuben Gaylord brought Congregationalism to Washington County in 1856 and the church operated an early institution of higher learning, the "Nebraska University" at Fontenelle, 1858-1872.
The Congregational Church of Blair was organized with eight communicants on February 10, 1870, less than a year after John I. Blair auctioned the original town lots a few blocks north of this site. For a time, the Reverend Marshall Tingley, who had come from Sioux City, conducted services in the courthouse or in private homes.
On November 22, 1874, a 28 by 40 foot sanctuary, characteristic of the Carpenter-gothic style of architecture, was dedicated on this site. Additions and improvements have occurred throughout the years but the original structure, along with many interior furnishings, has remained in use for more than a century as a center for worship and fellowship. The style and simplicity of this pioneer Congregational Church provides a fitting memorial to Washington County's religious heritage.
]]>During the mid-nineteenth century, steamboats played a major role in the settlement and development of the nation. In March 1865 the fully laden sternwheeler Bertrand left St. Louis under the command of Captain James Yore. The cargo of general merchandise and mercury, used in the refinement of gold, was bound for the frontier mining towns near Fort Benton, Montana Territory, at the headwaters of the Missouri.
On April 1, 1865 the 161-foot vessel struck a snag less than a mile from the village of DeSoto, Nebraska Territory. The site of the wreck is now part of the DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge. Although the boat sank in ten minutes, no lives were lost. The Bertrand was one of more than 400 steamboats wrecked on the Missouri during the riverboat era.
In 1967 salvors in cooperation with the federal government began a successful search for the Bertrand. The excavation was completed in October 1969 after 150 tons of cargo had been removed. The varied and precisely dated contents provide important research and interpretative resources after 103 years. On March 24, 1969 the historic importance of the Bertrand was recognized with its entry into the National Register of Historic Places.
]]>The town of DeSoto was platted on this site in 1854 and incorporated in 1855. Steamboating on the Missouri was then in its heyday. DeSoto provided a landing for passengers and goods. A number of boats sank nearby, notably the Cora and Bertrand. Ambitious citizens advanced plans to make DeSoto a "gateway to the West" - first by operating a ferry in 1857 and later by promoting a railroad to connect DeSoto with Fremont. A track was laid as far as present Blair. By 1857 DeSoto had grown to several hundred. Fifteen businesses flourished, including hotels, saloons, stores, newspapers, banks. The town was county seat from 1858 to 1866.
Its decline began in 1859 with a great exodus of residents to the Colorado gold fields. Following the Panic of 1857 its three banks closed. The Sioux City and Pacific Railroad, after buying the DeSoto line's franchise, chose to cross the river three miles north of DeSoto and in 1869 established Blair. DeSoto's hopes for growth were blasted. Its citizens left for other communities, a number to become figures of prominence in judicial, political, and financial circles in Nebraska. Today the Fort Calhoun Power Station is in the area where once flowed the Missouri River.
]]>From 1820 to 1827, the nation's largest and most westerly military post occupied this site, the earlier scene of Lewis and Clark's Council Bluff. In late 1819, troops under Colonel Henry Atkinson established Cantonment Missouri along the river near here. In 1820, a permanent post was built here on the bluffs and named Fort Atkinson. The post's population of over 1,000 included military personnel of the elite Rifle Regiment and Sixth Infantry, some of their families, and other civilians. The Sixth U.S. Infantry occupied Fort Atkinson when it was abandoned in 1827. The fortification consisted of a rectangular arrangement of one-story barracks fashioned of horizontal logs. The structures faced inward upon an enclosed parade ground with loopholes on the exterior walls. Four entrances were located near the center of the four walls. Cannons were mounted in the bastions at the northwest and southeast corners. A massively-built powder magazine occupied the center of the enclosed area. Outside the fortification were located a large council house for negotiating with the Indians, a gristmill, a schoolhouse, sawmill and other buildings. A brick kiln produced thousands of bricks. Fort Atkinson represents an important early step in opening the West.
]]>Civilization came to the west bank of the Missouri with the establishment of Fort Atkinson in 1820 about a half mile southeast of here. Named after its founder, General Henry Atkinson, this western-most Fort protected the frontier's developing commerce. Established as a temporary camp in 1819, Fort Atkinson was the largest and strongest outpost above St. Louis. The permanent post went up a year later on the site of Lewis and Clark's Council with the Oto and Missouri Indians. From Fort Atkinson troops under the command of Col. Henry Leavenworth moved up the Missouri River in 1823 to punish the Arikara Indians after an attack on William H. Ashley's fur trading party. Members of the garrison ascended the river in 1825 on a mission of peace, participating in a series of treaties with the Indians. This spearhead of white civilization was abandoned in 1827. But in seven years Fort Atkinson had brought the first school, the first white family life, a library, a sawmill, a brickyard, a grist mill, and large-scale agriculture of the west bank of the Missouri.
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