All Markers: 568
Markers
Lone Willow
A single willow tree on the banks of Antelope Creek served as a landmark along the Gordon Trail for settlers, fur traders, and Native Americans.
In 1885, Reverend John Scamahorn and 104 settlers from Indiana set up camp at the Lone Willow. Later…
Hastings Brickyard Park
Brickmaking in Hastings began in 1878, six years after the town was established. A year later much of the downtown was destroyed by fire in September 1879. Following the fire, the city passed an ordinance requiring future commercial buildings to…
Nemaha River Falls
In 1850, a group of pioneers from Maryland founded a small community on the banks of the swift-moving Nemaha River. Known as Falls Mills, the settlement was near the junction with the Missouri River and considered an ideal spot for a grinding mill.…
Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant
Commonly known as the Cornhusker Ordnance Plant, the facility opened in 1942 and covered nearly 20 square miles. During World War II it produced artillery shells and various bombs weighing up to 2,000 pounds apiece. An explosion on May 26, 1945,…
Indianola POW Camp
The US built prisoner of war camps across the country during World War II. One such camp opened north of Indianola. It held mostly German soldiers captured in North Africa and Italy. Prisoners began arriving by train in November 1943. The camp was…
Heber Hord House
Built in 1906 and remodeled in 1923, this was the home of cattleman Heber Hord until his death in 1949. Hord was the only son of Thomas Benton (T.B.) Hord, who founded a livestock feeding company based in Central City. T.B. Hord began his career…
Marshall Nurseries
Brothers George and Chester Marshall founded Marshall Brothers in 1887. Incorporated as Marshall Nurseries in 1916, the tree nursery survived for more than a century, bringing prosperity to Arlington and influencing horticulture throughout the…
Nebraska's Last Dry County
McPherson County was Nebraska’s last “dry” county. No alcohol was sold legally from the county’s founding in 1890 until 2004.
Federal Prohibition began in 1920 with the 18th Amendment.
Supporters believed Prohibition would decrease crime and…
Shell Creek Pawnee Settlements
By the early 1600s, the ancestors of the Pawnee Nation began consolidating into a few large communities. Each was home to hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Some of these were built along nearby Shell Creek. These Shell Creek cities may have…
The Founding of Oakland
The Aron Arlington family arrived as the area’s first Euroamerican settlers in 1857, later moving near Decatur.
Pioneer Log Cabin
The Beaver Valley was Pawnee land and later attracted hunters, trappers, and settlers to the region. Furnas County was established in 1873 and Beaver City was elected as the county seat. This one-room cabin is an example of early settler lodgings.…
Escape of the Northern Cheyenne
By 1878 more than 300 Northern Cheyennes were desperate to escape their hated reservation in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Led by Dull Knife and Little Wolf, they headed for their homeland in the north, fighting their way across Kansas. At about noon…
Russell, Majors, & Waddell House
The U.S. Army built this house in 1858 as the residence of Quartermaster Major James Martin. The house was sold in 1859 to the Russell, Majors, and Waddell Freighting Company. The company had a contract to haul supplies to military posts. It used…
Nebraska Institute for the Blind
Founded by Samuel Bacon, the school formally opened March 10, 1875, in a rented house at 13th and Cheyenne Streets. The first building was erected on this site and opened January 13, 1876. Originally a job training school for students up to age 65,…
Sea Level Bench Mark
"The stone monument at this location is one of Nebraska's original bench marks.
Surveyors use bench marks to determine elevations. This one was placed by the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey in 1902. It was part of a larger project in…
Railroad Turntable, 1887-1983
Burwell began as a post office named The Forks in 1875. The town was incorporated as a village and changed its name to Burwell in 1884. Three years later, the newly-incorporated Lincoln & Black Hills Railroad laid track from Central City to…
Etna
The first Etna post office (1885-1895) was located three miles to the northwest. A new post office operated 1.5 miles east until 1921. In 1907 Etna saw the opening of a school, store, and telephone exchange. The store was enlarged by Andrew…
Mari Sandoz in Lincoln
Mari Sandoz (1896-1966), Nebraska historian and novelist, lived at this site, 1226 J Street, from 1925 to 1937. Here in 1928, she began writing Old Jules, the biography of her father. From the J Street curb, she often wrote and watched construction…
Bradshaw
After 1861 an important variant of the overland trails system, the Nebraska City-Fort Kearney Cutoff, passed nearby, over which freight was transported from the Missouri River to western forts and mining camps. The region's first settlements…
Henderson, Nebraska 1887-1987
In 1887 the Fremont, Elkhorn, and Missouri Valley Railroad extended its tracks from York to Hastings. Henderson was built along the railroad on land sold by Cornelius Regier to the Pioneer Town Site Company in October 1887, for $15,000. The village,…
Porcupine Ranch
Between 1855 and 1867 companies like Russell, Majors, and Waddell shipped millions of pounds of freight across the plains to supply military posts and mining camps to the West. After 1861 freighters followed the "Nebraska City-Fort Kearney…
Nebraska 4-H Clubs Began in York County
In 1898 E. C. Bishop, a teacher in nearby Bradshaw, organized student clubs. Through these clubs he planned his school lessons so that they related to the students' activities on the farm and in the home. The first projects Bishop assigned dealt…
Nebraska City - Fort Kearny Cut-Off
Massive freighting of supplies by ox and mule trains was a direct result of the establishment of Fort Kearny and other western military posts. The Mormon War and the discovery of gold in the territories of Colorado and Montana increased this trade,…
Henderson Mennonite Centennial 1874-1974
Thirty-five families comprised the original Mennonite settlement in York and Hamilton Counties, Nebraska. They were part of a large segment who left homes in South Russia in 1874 and began the trek that took them to the American plains. Originally…
Pibel Lake Recreation Area
Pibel Lake grew out of an 1897-1898 irrigation claim for water rights by Edwin Pibel, called Clear Creek Ditch. Three years earlier, a diversion dam had been placed across the creek to form a lake, but the irrigation ditch was eventually abandoned…
Cowles Consolidated School
The village of Cowles, founded in 1878 and incorporated in 1912, in 1913 approved a bond issue of $14,000 to construct a three-story brick schoolhouse on this site. It was completed in 1915. Classes were taught there to the eleventh grade level. The…
School District 35, "The Killough School"
District 35 provided education through the eighth grade from 1879 until 1958. The schoolhouse sat upon Felix Alexander Killough's homestead, filed January 2, 1879, which adjoined the homestead of his father, Thomas Donley Killough, filed June…
Emmanuel Lutheran Church, 1904-1952
Three German Lutheran congregations, Zion, Salem, and Emmanuel, built churches in Stillwater Precinct, Webster County, Nebraska. Emmanuel was the last to build and the last to disband. Emmanuel Lutheran Church was formally dedicated on this site,…
Benjamin Wagoner Memorial Cemetery
Benjamin Wagoner homesteaded this land in 1870. In 1882 his widow, Catharine Fouts Wagoner, gave these 2 1/2 acres in his memory "for the benefit of the community at large and the religious people known as Brethren, or German Baptist, for the…
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…