Grand Island Veterans Home

Legislative Bill 247, passed March 4, 1887, required at least 640 donated acres, and at a March 31 meeting in the Bartenbach Opera House local citizens pledged within 36 hours the $25,600 to buy land three miles north of town. Governor John M. Thayer laid the cornerstone on October 20, 1887, and Civil War veteran Oliver P. Duncan was the first man admitted, on June 28, 1888. Built for Union veterans, it later admitted Confederates, and in 1939 it took in the closed Milford home's members.

What the plaque says

Grand Island Veterans Home First known as the Nebraska Soldiers and Sailors Home, the Grand Island Veterans Home was opened in 1887. The first home was a four-story Victorian building situated on 640 acres. The building soon became inadequate to house the veterans. Between 1910 and 1965, a new campus was constructed consisting of eight primary buildings and a veterans' cemetery. The original Victorian building was torn down in 1931. In January 2019 a new Veterans Home was opened in Kearney and this campus was vacated. Nebraska Department of Veterans Affairs Nebraska State Historical Society, 2019

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer — 4.5 mi
  Edward Durell Stone's island pavilion in Grand Island and an 1890s railroad town of moved buildings, among them the cottage where Henry Fonda was born in 1905.

More markers nearby

• Hall County Poor Farm Cemetery — 2.0 mi
• Tornado Hill — 2.0 mi
• The Lincoln Memorial Highway — 2.0 mi
• Pioneer Park — 2.0 mi