Garfield County

Both names here are borrowed. The county, organized in 1884, took the name of James A. Garfield, the twentieth president. Frank Webster laid out the town on land owned by his family and by I. B. Nelson, a grist miller, and by local tradition proposed the name for Ida Burwell, his brother's fiancée, who had died shortly before their wedding. The Forks post office took the new name on January 21, 1884. A later story that the B in Nelson's initials stood for Burwell was rejected by Will Nelson: the town, he said, was named for Ida Burwell.

What the plaque says

Garfield County In 1872, settlement pioneered by Charles H. Jones in what is now Garfield County, followed the North Loup River northwestward to its junction with the Calamus River. In 1875, the post office serving the area near the confluence of the rivers was named The Forks. In 1884, it was renamed Burwell. This valley was a natural route for the Sioux when raiding the Pawnee Reservation southeast of here. In blocking the path of the Indian raiders, settlers invited the wrath of the Sioux. Conflict between the whites and the Indian was inevitable, and the battles of Pebble Creek (1874) and The Blowout (1876) were the result. Settlers found an abundance of wild life for food and giant cedars for building purposes. Many of these trees were used in the construction of nearby Fort Hartsuff in 1874. The government reserved five sections of land in this valley for hay and wood for the fort. Garfield County was organized in 1884 with the county seat at nearby Willow Springs. When the county seat was moved to Burwell in 1890, Willow Springs was abandoned. Garfield County Centennial Committee Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Hartsuff State Historical Park — 7.0 mi
  A small infantry post of 1874 in the North Loup valley, built of local lime concrete on the raiding road between Lakota and Pawnee country, and kept nearly whole by eighty years of farming.

More markers nearby

• Railroad Turntable, 1887-1983 — 0.4 mi
• The Easter Blizzard of 1873 — 0.9 mi
• The Pebble Creek Fight — 0.9 mi
• Kamp Kaleo — 2.1 mi