Czech Capital

Congress put the title into federal law. Public Law 100-69, Senate Joint Resolution 51, approved July 10, 1987, named July 27 through August 2 of that year National Czech American Heritage Week. Its preamble said Nebraska had the largest per-capita percentage of Czech descendants and described Wilber as known as the Czech capital of the United States, a town about to hold its 26th annual National Czech Festival on August 1 and 2. The town carries the name of C. D. Wilber, who platted it in 1873.

What the plaque says

Czech Capital Many nationalities blended in America and Nebraska to create our great nation and state. Prominent among them were the Czechs. They left a land which knew a great history and culture. The first university in Central Europe was established in Prague over 100 years before Columbus discovered America. Throughout generations of wars and oppression the Czech people kept alive their language, music, arts and customs, and they brought them to the New World. Here they live on. Charles Culek, who came to Nebraska in 1856, was the first permanent Czech settler. The first Czechs came to Saline County in 1865. In all, some 50,000 Czechs settled in Nebraska, most of them from the Province of Bohemia. They tended to congregate in villages, such as Wilber, officially designated by the Governor as the Czech Capital of Nebraska. Schuyler, Clarkson, Prague, and other towns were mainly settled by Czechs. Like other pioneers, Czechs conquered the hardships of frontier life, and thrived in the new land. Here they found freedom from oppression, and opportunity for their children. These people's industry and patriotism, with that of other nationalities, helped to make America and Nebraska great. Nebraska Czechs of Wilber Historical Land Mark Council

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Homestead National Historical Park — 15 mi
  Daniel Freeman's claim on Cub Creek near Beatrice, one of the first filed under the Homestead Act, with a one-room school, a homesteader's cabin, restored prairie and the land's earlier owners.
• Nebraska State Capitol — 26 mi
  Bertram Goodhue's 400-foot tower on the prairie, built in four phases from 1922 to 1932 and paid off on completion, home of the only one-house legislature in the country.

More markers nearby

• Swan City — 5.2 mi
• Pleasant Hill — 10 mi
• Plymouth — 12 mi
• PFC Charley Havlat — 14 mi