Kearney-Fort Kearny

Travelers disagreed about the place. In 1849 John Edwin Banks counted about twenty sod houses with walls two feet thick and no blockhouse or palisade; a few soldiers and two or three cannon were all that showed it was not some outlandish village. A writer signing S.M.B. told the Missouri Republican in 1852 that it was a one-horse affair, stuck in the mud on the wrong side of the river. By 1859 John T. Gibson found a respectable little place with dinner at 75 cents. The city's extra e, History Nebraska notes, keeps alive an old misspelling.

What the plaque says

Kearney-Fort Kearny For the next fifty miles east-bound travelers will be passing from the semi-arid Great Plains into the prairie country of eastern Nebraska. Near here are located the city of Kearney and Fort Kearny, for which it was named. The fort was established in 1847 and continued in use until 1871. Fort Kearny was built at a point where eastern trails joined to form the Great Platte River Road to the West. Thousands of overland travelers passed by the fort each year. The U. S. Army was sent here not only to aid and protect the emigrants but also to protect the Indian tribes in the region from the travelers and to prevent inter-tribal warfare. Numerous road ranches were established near the fort. One notorious outfitting point nearby was Dobytown, which also attracted pleasure-seeking soldiers. Several military expeditions against hostile Indians were garrisoned at this post during the 1860's, when the Sioux and Cheyenne made many raids against wagon trains and Union Pacific Railroad construction crews. Once the railroad was built and settlers entered the area, the need for the post lessened, and it was abandoned. Today it is a State Historical Park and is entered on the National Register of Historic Places. Department of Roads Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Kearny State Historical Park — 8.1 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.
• Rowe Sanctuary — 14 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.

More markers nearby

• The Great Plains — 1.9 mi
• Kearney Cotton Mill — 2.3 mi
• Historic Kearney — 3.7 mi
• University of Nebraska at Kearney — 3.9 mi