Franklin County

This courthouse exists because Franklin won the county seat back. Bloomington held it from 1874 until Franklin's backers mounted a challenge in the late 1910s, and in 1920 voters approved the move. The county had already bought a site for $5,000 and aimed at a building of about $100,000 from a countywide tax. Lincoln architect George A. Berlinghof drew the plans, and Vrana Brothers of Omaha won the contract in April 1925. Finished in 1926, it is Classical Revival in golden tan brick and limestone, and its high courtroom keeps grey marble wainscoting and acanthus-patterned beams.

What the plaque says

Franklin County Present Franklin County was formerly a part of the buffalo hunting range of the Pawnee Indians, whose villages were at one time located further down the valley of the Republican River. Cheyenne and Sioux hunting parties also frequented the area prior to 1869, when General Carr's Republican River Expedition cleared the valley of hostiles, opening the region to white settlement. In September 1870, the Thompson Colony founded Riverton in the eastern part of the county, and the Republican Land and Claim Association or Knight Colony arrived on November 25th, to found the town of Franklin. In the Spring of 1871, a small Negro colony attempted to found a settlement, but their lack of finances forced its abandonment. By proclamation of Governor Butler, the county was organized on March 3, 1871, with Franklin as the county seat. Nearby Bloomington, site of the U.S. Land Office for the region, won the county seat in 1874, where it remained until 1920. With the arrival of the railroad in 1879, this fertile country was soon settled by homesteaders, many of whose descendants still reside here. Founded during years of depression and natural disaster, Franklin County has a proud heritage. Franklin County Centennial Committee Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Harlan County Lake — 14 mi
  Nebraska's second-largest lake, held behind an Army Corps dam on the Republican between Alma and Republican City, built after the flood of 1935 ran bluff to bluff.
• Home on the Range Cabin — 14 mi
  Dr. Brewster Higley's 1872 homestead cabin on West Beaver Creek in Smith County, where he wrote the poem that became Home on the Range, kept on its ground by a farm couple who would not sell it.
• National Willa Cather Center — 23 mi
  The restored Moon Block on Red Cloud's Webster Street, home of the Willa Cather Foundation, with the town she grew up in and wrote about laid out around it.
• Willa Cather Memorial Prairie — 24 mi
  Six hundred and twelve acres of never-plowed mixed-grass prairie south of Red Cloud, once Kitkehahki Pawnee country, named for the writer who said the grass was the country.

More markers nearby

• Franklin Academy — 0.3 mi
• Osco Cemetery and School — 20 mi
• Walker's Ranch — 22 mi
• St. Juliana Falconieri Catholic Church — 23 mi