Duncan, 1871-1971

Jackson became Duncan in 1880 because Nebraska already had a Jackson, in Dakota County; the new name honored General Wood B. Duncan, a prominent onetime local resident. The village grew slowly. John Stauffer, later Platte County clerk, built a store there that A. T. Andreas called the first house in the town, and when Andreas described the place in 1882 it had about fifty people, two hotels, a grain elevator, one store, a hay press and a district school, and wrote that with the growth of Columbus it had, if anything, gone backward. Duncan counted 392 people in 2020.

What the plaque says

1871 Duncan 1971 The history of Duncan, Nebraska has been closely associated with overland routes through the Platte and Loup River valleys. The Mormon Trail passed nearby during the mid-19th Century and the first transcontinental railroad was completed to this point in 1866. The early settlers in the area included Swiss and Polish immigrants. In June, 1869, Cherry Hill Post Office was established here. Two years later, in 1871, officials of the Union Pacific Rail- road platted the town of Jackson on this site. In 1879, Jackson was selected as the location for the junction of the Union Pacific and its subsidiary, the Omaha, Niobrara, and Black Hills Railroad. Union Pacific financier Jay Gould reportedly chose Jackson for the junction because he was angered at the nearby town of Columbus which had promoted construction of a rival railroad into the region. However, an ice jam destroyed the Loup River bridge on the Omaha, Niobrara and Black Hills line in 1881, and the tracks were later re- located to join the Union Pacific at Columbus. In 1880, Jackson was renamed Duncan and the Village was formally incorporated on March 4, 1913. Duncan Lions Club Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Genoa U.S. Indian School Museum — 13 mi
  The surviving trades building of a federal boarding school that ran from 1884 to 1934 on the Pawnee Nation's last Nebraska land, where at least 86 children died and the cemetery is still lost.

More markers nearby

• The Lincoln Highway-Gardiner Station Section — 5.1 mi
• Andrew Jackson Higgins — 6.7 mi
• The Villasur Expedition, 1720 — 6.8 mi
• The North Brothers — 6.8 mi