The Lincoln Highway-Gardiner Station Section

For years this road ran on Union Pacific land, and the railroad set the terms. In 1916 it told Platte County to lease ground on its right-of-way for twenty years at $10 a year or move the road, and the county took a 50-foot lease. Federal aid did not at first reach roads on railroad land, and in 1919, when that changed for counties holding leases, the Lincoln Highway Association's Henry C. Ostermann called Platte the only Nebraska county that had acted promptly. Gardiner itself had been a post office from 1884 to 1887 before becoming a railroad station.

What the plaque says

The Lincoln Highway Gardiner Station Section The Lincoln Highway Association was founded in 1913 to promote a coast-to-coast, toll-free automobile route. The Lincoln Highway, which followed existing roadways through thirteen states, was dedicated on October 31, 1913. The route was marked by the letter "L" within red, white, and blue bands, painted on telephone poles or signs. In Nebraska the Lincoln Highway continued the evolution of the Platte River Valley as a significant travel corridor in American history. Used by fur traders, the U.S. Army, overland emigrants, and the transcontinental railroad during the nineteenth century, the valley remains an important modern railroad and highway route. This 1.2-mile Gardiner Station section of the original Lincoln Highway and the Pratt pony-truss bridge spanning Prairie Creek were in use from 1913 to 1928, when this highway section was rerouted south of the Union Pacific tracks. By then the Lincoln Highway had received federal designation as U.S. Highway 30. The original highway section and bridge are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Nebraska Chapter Lincoln Highway Association 2009 Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Genoa U.S. Indian School Museum — 10 mi
  The surviving trades building of a federal boarding school that ran from 1884 to 1934 on the Pawnee Nation's last Nebraska land, where at least 86 children died and the cemetery is still lost.

More markers nearby

• Duncan, 1871-1971 — 5.1 mi
• Genoa: 1857-1859 — 10 mi
• Pawnee — 10 mi
• Andrew Jackson Higgins — 12 mi