Lincoln's Founding Block

Salt drew the first settlers here, before any talk of a capital. The village of Lancaster grew up in 1856 on the salt marshes, and the salt stopped paying once Kansas salt mines opened. The name Lincoln began as a trap. In the 1867 fight over moving the capital south of the Platte, Omaha senator J. N. H. Patrick proposed it as a last-ditch effort to stop the move, betting that senators from south of the river, where many had sympathized with the Confederacy, would never vote for it. The removal passed anyway, name and all.

What the plaque says

Lincoln's Founding Block The Territorial Legislature at Omaha drew the boundaries of Lancaster County in 1855. Settlers first arrived in 1856 and a county government was established "on paper" in 1859. Methodist Elder John M. Young arrived at the head of a colony in 1863, staked out claims, and laid out the townsite of Lancaster centered on this block the following year. Young erected on the block a two-story female seminary which served as a school and religious-governmental meeting hall before burning in 1867. The destiny of Lancaster, population 30, was deter- mined in County Commissioner William T. Donovan's home (located near 9th and Q Streets) on July 29, 1867. There the State Capital Commission (Governor David Butler, Secretary of State Thomas P. Kennard, and State Auditor John Gillespie), after traveling throughout eastern Nebraska, designated Lancaster the site of the new seat of State Government to be known as Lincoln after the martyred President. This block accommodated much of Lincoln's early commerce: hotels, business houses, stagecoach depot, government offices, and religious halls. Lincoln's first church building, erected on this corner in 1868, was the predecessor to St. Paul's Methodist Church, 12th and M Streets. Journal-Star Printing Company Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Nebraska State Capitol — 0.7 mi
  Bertram Goodhue's 400-foot tower on the prairie, built in four phases from 1922 to 1932 and paid off on completion, home of the only one-house legislature in the country.
• Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum — 25 mi
  Two hangar-sized halls beside I-80 near Ashland holding the bombers and reconnaissance planes of the command that ran America's nuclear force from Offutt, south of Omaha, from 1948 to 1992.

More markers nearby

• U. S. Post Office and Courthouse (Old City Hall) — steps away
• The University of Nebraska — steps away
• The Nebraska State Historical Society — 0.4 mi
• Pershing Rifles — 0.5 mi