Bellevue Rifle Range

The dedication line names James E. Potter (1945-2016), who joined the State Historical Society in 1967 and served there nearly forty-nine years as state archivist, editor of Nebraska History and senior research historian. His Standing Firmly by the Flag: Nebraska Territory and the Civil War, 1861-1867, published by Bison Books in 2013, was the first book to fully explore Nebraska's part in that war, and it won the Nebraska Book Award for nonfiction history. His colleagues called his depth of knowledge legendary. He died unexpectedly on August 6, 2016, at seventy.

What the plaque says

The Bellevue Rifle Range From 1886 through 1894 the U.S. Army's Department of the Platte leased this site to provide marksmanship training for Fort Omaha soldiers. Each year in late summer, the range also hosted troops from other Great Plains posts for the department rifle, carbine, and revolver competition. Periodically, the Division of the Missouri matches and the army's "distinguished marksmen" matches, the latter featuring top shooters from around the nation, were held here. Maj. Guy V. Henry, Sr., a noted cavalry officer, was in charge of the range through 1889. The target "pits" lay to the north/northwest (an area now occupied by houses) with designated firing points from 200 to 600 yards south/southeast of the pits. When the range was in use, tent camps for officers and enlisted men stood to the east overlooking the Missouri River. Soldiers and civilian spectators reached the range via a railroad below the bluff. As nearby Fort Crook neared completion, the army in 1895 discontinued the Bellevue range. Unfortunately, new target ranges at the fort proved unsatisfactory. Ineffective backstops sometimes allowed bullets to fall on private property outside the military reservation. In Memory of State Historian James E. Potter (1945-2016) Nebraska State Historical Society, 2017

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Durham Museum (Omaha Union Station) — 7.0 mi
  Omaha's 1931 Union Station, Gilbert Stanley Underwood's Art Deco depot for the Union Pacific, closed to trains in 1971 and kept as a city museum with its waiting room intact.
• Joslyn Art Museum — 7.9 mi
  Omaha's free art museum, a 1931 Art Deco memorial with two modern pavilions, and the keeper of Karl Bodmer's watercolors from the upper Missouri in 1833 and 1834.
• Malcolm X Birthsite — 10 mi
  The North Omaha lot where Malcolm Little was born in May 1925 and his family was driven out by the Klan, saved by Rowena Moore and now planned as a cultural center.
• Winter Quarters and the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery — 13 mi
  The Latter-day Saint camp of 1846 to 1848 on Omaha land in what is now Florence, where hundreds died the first winter, and the cemetery and trail center beside it.

More markers nearby

• Bellevue Log Cabin — 0.9 mi
• Bellevue — 1.0 mi
• First Presbyterian Church — 1.1 mi
• Fontenelle Bank - County Courthouse — 1.2 mi