The Ferguson House

Ferguson made his money in grain. He came to Nebraska by covered wagon in 1879 from Earlville, Illinois, farmed, promoted winter wheat and in 1890 brought alfalfa seed from Denver. He built up 85 to 90 grain elevators, sold most of them in 1902 and went into milling. In the late 1890s he founded the Beatrice Creamery Company, and in 1917 Capitol Beach amusement park in Lincoln. He held a major interest in Yankee Hill Brick, which at its peak made 75,000 bricks a day, and owned about 6,000 acres by 1913. He died in Lincoln in 1937.

What the plaque says

The Ferguson House William Henry Ferguson, Lincoln businessman and investor, built this house in 1909-11. It is one of the best examples of the Second Renaissance Revival style in Lincoln and perhaps in Nebraska. Architects were Searles, Hirsh and Gavin of Cleveland, Ohio; the builder was Olson Construction of Lincoln. Purchased by the State of Nebraska in 1963, the Ferguson house is administered by the Nebraska State Historical Society. This property is on the National Register of Historic Places. Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Nebraska State Capitol — steps away
  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.
• Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum — 25 mi
  Two hangar-sized halls beside I-80 near Ashland holding the bombers and reconnaissance planes of the command that ran America's nuclear force from Offutt, south of Omaha, from 1948 to 1992.

More markers nearby

• Nebraska Statehood Memorial — steps away
• Mari Sandoz in Lincoln — 0.3 mi
• County-City Building — 0.5 mi
• U. S. Post Office and Courthouse (Old City Hall) — 0.7 mi