Culbertson, First Hitchcock County Seat

The fur trader the town was named for had little left by the time it was. Alexander Culbertson, born near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in 1809, ran American Fur Company posts on the upper Missouri and by 1858 had a fortune estimated at $300,000, enough for a farm and fine house called Locust Grove at Peoria, Illinois. Poor investments bankrupted him, and he went back west in 1868. He died on August 27, 1879, at Orleans, about seventy miles east down the Republican, in the home of George H. Roberts, husband of his oldest daughter, Julia.

What the plaque says

Culbertson First Hitchcock County Seat Culbertson was the county seat of Hitchcock County for twenty years, and this marks the site of the first court house, used 1886-1893. Founded as a trading post in July 1873 by W. Z. Taylor, it became the county seat when Hitchcock County was organized August 30, 1873. The county was named for U. S. Senator P. W. Hitchcock, and the town was named for Alexander Culbertson, noted fur trader of the Upper Missouri then living at Orleans. The community consisted of Taylor's store and J.E. Kleven's blacksmith shop and post office until 1875, when thousands of Texas cattle were brought into the four southwest Nebraska counties. Culbertson was the only town in the region, and the ranchers made it their headquarters, many serving as county officials. During the years of the "open range," the ranchers spent summers on the range, but moved to Culbertson in winter, taking advantage of the schools and social life. The railroad arrived in 1881, and thousands of homesteaders flocked into the county displacing the ranchers. During this period, Culbertson became a pioneer irrigation center. In 1893, the county seat was moved to Trenton, near the center of the county. Hitchcock County Historical Society Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Massacre Canyon Monument — 6.9 mi
  A granite shaft east of Trenton above the canyon where Lakota warriors attacked a Pawnee buffalo-hunting camp on August 5, 1873, a year before the Pawnee left Nebraska.
• Senator George Norris State Historic Site — 11 mi
  The McCook house George W. Norris kept as his home base for forty-two years, given to the state with its furniture by his wife Ellie, by the senator who wrote the lame-duck amendment.

More markers nearby

• Massacre Canyon — 6.8 mi
• Stone Church — 8.3 mi
• George William Norris, 1861-1944 — 11 mi
• Prisoners of War in Hitchcock County — 16 mi