Boettger Farm

Fred V. Grau found the plant in 1935, a weed with lavender flowers in rocky soil on a southeastern Pennsylvania farm, while a Penn State agronomist. He bred a variety he called Penngift, and by 1948 he had persuaded Pennsylvania's highway department to plant it along roadsides. By the 1950s crownvetch covered road cuts, mine sites and railroad embankments across North America. Many states now list it as invasive and the Federal Highway Administration discourages it, though Fred V. Grau Jr. told Congress in 2003 that Penngift seed had been his family business's mainstay for half a century.

What the plaque says

Boettger Farm This 160-acre farm, most of which is now a lake and recreational area, was once home to three generations of Boettgers: William A. and Mina Stuhr Boettger, Otto M. and Irene Grau Boettger, Robert D. and Nadeen Preston Boettger. Homesteaded by Isaac Burgman in 1860, the land was purchased by Marx Stuhr in 1887, and given as a wedding gift to his daughter, Mina. William A. Boettger, a German carpenter, built large barns and a handsome house on the hill. Champion White Wyandotte chickens were raised here. The land was nurtured with conservation measures and huge quantities of organic fertilizer from its Holstein dairy herd. The first demonstration by a Douglas County Extension Home Agent is said to have been presented here. In 1951 the first Nebraska fields of crown vetch, discovered and developed by former Nebraskan, Dr. Fred V. Grau, were planted as a seed crop. Mina Stuhr Boettger was born in Douglas County and lived her 98½ years here. Her son, Otto M., was born on this land and spent 80 of his 82 years. It is to these generations and to their love of the land that this marker is dedicated. Boettger, King and Ward families Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Winter Quarters and the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery — 5.0 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.
• Fort Atkinson State Historical Park — 6.5 mi
  The first U.S. Army post west of the Missouri, a garrison town of more than a thousand people on Council Bluff from 1820 to 1827, rebuilt on its own foundations.
• Malcolm X Birthsite — 6.9 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.
• Joslyn Art Museum — 9.1 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.

More markers nearby

• Fort Atkinson — steps away
• Potter's Field — 4.0 mi
• Shipley Cemetery — 4.1 mi
• Kobs Pioneer Cemetery — 4.6 mi