Thirty Swedish settlers in Harlan and Phelps counties organized Bethel Lutheran Church on November 12, 1877, at the home and post office of Gustaf Hanson, which was located seven miles south and two miles east of Holdrege in Harlan County. Their…

Civil War veteran P. C. Funk came to Divide Township in Phelps County in 1877 and purchased 160 acres of land two miles north of the present town. By 1883 the Nebraska-Colorado Railroad, now the Burlington Northern, had extended its line as far west…

Bertrand was platted by the Lincoln Land Company in June 1885, and the tracks of the Burlington Railroad soon reached here from Holdrege. The village was named in honor of Alonzo Bertrand Minor, a railroad official and later secretary of the Lincoln…

During World War II, a prisoner-of-war internment camp was located directly north of here. The camp had its beginning in a request by the Holdredge New Industries Committee for a federal conscientious-objector camp to help relieve the severe…

Soils in the Holdrege series are recognized by features of their "profile" created by horizontal layers that are the result of the prairie environment. Holdrege soils exist on 1.8 million acres of landscape in central Nebraska that is the…

This monument, dedicated to the early pioneers, marks the location of Sacramento, one of the first towns in Phelps County. Sacramento was established between 1876 and 1878 with an estimated area population of two hundred. Numerous businesses…

Through this valley passed the Oregon Trail, highway for early explorers, fur traders, California-bound gold seekers, freighters, and brave pioneers seeking new homes in the West. Traffic was especially heavy from 1843 to 1866. At times as many as…