Cook

Cook's best-known landmark stands about 50 yards south of this marker: the Duane E. Carman Memorial Bridge, built in 1989 and the only covered bridge in Nebraska. It was Carman's idea. He found a design in the library's books on covered bridges, and his son, a construction student at Southeast Community College, drew plans based on a Vermont bridge. Residents built it of old barn wood from the area, paid for with money the village raised at its 1988 centennial. Former board member Dave Armknecht recalled that busloads of people came to look at it.

What the plaque says

Cook This region was once home to Oto and Missouria Indians, who ceded their land to the government before Nebraska Territory was created in 1854. White settlers arrived in 1857 and founded a town and post office named Helena about four miles west of here. Spring Creek Post Office was established in 1868 about two miles to the southeast. A settlement named Bob Town, with a school, a church, and a few businesses, grew up nearby. When the Crete branch of the Missouri Pacific Railroad was built along the south fork of the Little Nemaha River in 1888, the rails bypassed Helena and Bob Town. John William Cook founded a new town named after his father, Andrew Cook Sr., on the railroad right-of-way. Spring Creek Post Office moved to Cook; Helena and Bob Town disappeared. Cook had about fifty residents when the first train arrived in November 1888, and the village incorporated in 1891. Because of many artesian wells nearby, Cook became known as "Artesian City." Nebraska State Historical Society Farmers Bank of Cook

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arbor Lodge State Historical Park — 19 mi
  J. Sterling Morton's estate in Nebraska City, a four-room house of 1855 grown to 52 rooms among the trees he planted, home of the man who proposed Arbor Day in 1872.

More markers nearby

• 1882 Talmage, Nebraska 1982 — 7.7 mi
• Tecumseh — 9.9 mi
• Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Cutoff — 11 mi
• French Settlement of Julian — 16 mi