Gibbon

Gibbon's colonists won the county seat in the election of October 10, 1871, and built a courthouse to hold it. Samuel Clay Bassett, one of them, set down the figures. Bonds carried 121 to 55 on May 7, 1872, and the $20,000 issue at 10 percent brought the county $17,500. H. B. Dexter of Omaha contracted to build for $16,925 with brick made at Gibbon, fired with green wood hauled by ox team from the Loup until coal had to finish the job. William Brady died in a sand-pit cave-in. A dance opened the building on February 22, 1873.

What the plaque says

Gibbon Gibbon, near here, was the site of a unique experiment in homestead colonization. The Soldiers' Free Homestead Temperance Colony was responsible for bringing the earliest settlers, mostly Union veterans, to this locality. Traveling via the Union Pacific Railroad, the first group arrived April 7, 1871, when the only building was a small section house. They lived in railroad boxcars until sod or frame homes could be built. Their first view of the area was not encouraging, since a prairie fire had recently swept the region, and two days after their arrival a blizzard struck. Still, of 129 families only one failed to file a homestead claim. As you travel east, you will parallel the Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Cut-off which joined the main Overland Trail near here. This freighting trail, in operation from about 1860-1869, was designed to speed travel between the Missouri River, frontier military posts, and Denver. It offered a more direct route than the earlier Ox-Bow Trail which looped north to the Platte Valley. Freighting over the Cut-off peaked in 1865 when 44 million pounds of supplies were shipped west from Nebraska City. Department of Roads Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rowe Sanctuary — 5.7 mi
  Audubon's sanctuary on the Platte near Gibbon, where the river's sandbars are kept bare so that sandhill cranes, more than a million in the valley each spring, can roost safely at night.
• Fort Kearny State Historical Park — 11 mi
  The 1848 army post on the Platte, built on a strip of Pawnee land bought for $2,000 in goods, where emigrant wagons passed by the thousand and only the cottonwoods outlasted the fort.

More markers nearby

• Nebraska Centre-Boyd Ranche — 1.3 mi
• 1871 Gibbon 1971 — 2.8 mi
• Joseph E. Johnson and The Huntsman's Echo — 6.2 mi
• 1872 Lowell 1972 — 6.9 mi