Hemingford

The plaque's Hemmingsford is not quite the place. Lilian Fitzpatrick's 1960 Nebraska Place-Names says the founder was a native of Hemmingford, Quebec, a township due south of Montreal on the New York line, known since the mid-1800s as one of Quebec's main apple districts. That township was itself named for Hemingford Abbots in Huntingdonshire, England. Somewhere between Quebec and the Panhandle the Nebraska town dropped an m. Stephen King later borrowed the name for his fictional Hemingford Home, Nebraska. The real village was incorporated in 1886 and counted 787 people in the 2020 census.

What the plaque says

Hemingford The site of Hemingford was first settled by Canadian immigrants in the summer of 1885. A town company was organized in 1886 and land was sold to the Lincoln Land Company which formally platted the townsite. The cluster of frame and sod buildings was named in honor of Hemmingsford, the settlers' former home. Much of Hemingford's early history involved the location of the Box Butte County seat. After the county was created from southern Dawes County in 1886, the courthouse was built in rival Nonpareil. Later, in an 1890 election, Hemingford secured the prize with the backing of the Lincoln Land Company which wished to promote the community's growth. County offices remained here until 1899 when voters designated Alliance the permanent county seat in still another bitterly-fought election. The court- house was moved on the Burlington railroad from Hemingford to Alliance. This area became noted for the production of alfalfa seed and potatoes. In 1930, 1,893 carloads of potatoes were shipped from Hemingford and the town was known as the "Potato Capital of the World". Today Hemingford remains an important agricultural center for the northern panhandle. Kute Kookies 4-H Club Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carhenge — 17 mi
  A son's memorial to his father on the family farm north of Alliance: Stonehenge copied to scale in old American cars sprayed gray, dedicated at the 1987 summer solstice.
• Fort Robinson State Park — 31 mi
  The army post beside the Red Cloud Agency where Crazy Horse was bayoneted in 1877 and Morning Star's Northern Cheyenne broke out into the January cold of 1879.

More markers nearby

• Box Butte Country — 10 mi
• Burlington Locomotive 719 — 18 mi
• Alliance Army Air Field — 21 mi
• Crawford — 30 mi