Harvard

Harvard's first building was the railroad station, A. T. Andreas wrote in 1882, and the town grew around it in the year after the tracks arrived. E. H. Birdsall opened the first business house that February, O. G. Peck and A. Meston started a lumber yard that spring, William Rowe opened a shoe shop, and E. W. Dimick and Brad Stone built the first hotel, the town's first two-story building. Harvard had about 200 people by the end of that year and nearly 1,000 by 1882. It counted 951 in 2020.

What the plaque says

Harvard Tracks of the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad reached Harvard on December 20, 1871. The town was surveyed in March 1872 and platted on a section of land pre-empted by Newman W. Brass, George Van Gilder, Elijah J. Stone, and Levi W. Mosher. They sold this land for $500 per quarter section to Charles F. Morse of the Eastern Land Association, a company which developed town sites along the railroad. Harvard was named by a railroad employee to follow Grafton as one of a series of towns on the line christened in alphabetical order. Harvard was incorporated as a Village on July 1, 1873. It became a Second Class City in 1879, and W. J. Turner served as the first Mayor. Because the population was less than 1500, it returned to Village status in 1880, only to become a Second Class City again in 1886. During the 1870's Harvard vied with other towns to become the county seat of Clay County. After several disputed elections, Clay Center was selected as the location of the Courthouse in 1879. Harvard Bicentennial Committee Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer — 23 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

• Midair Collision of B-17 Bombers — 0.2 mi
• Harvard Army Air Field — 0.2 mi
• Harvard's 1915 Carnegie Library — 0.3 mi
• Harvard Jail — 0.3 mi