Meckling & Lincoln

Meckling was laid out in 1873 and named for Jones S. Meckling, a railroad man. The 2020 census counted 48 people. The school closed in 1965 and families chose between the Gayville and Vermillion districts, and the post office's ZIP code has since been folded into Vermillion's. What the place kept is hay. Alfalfa from the Missouri bottoms earned it the nickname Hay Capital of the Universe, and every August it shares Hay Days with Gayville, its neighbor to the west.

What the plaque says

Meckling & Lincoln Named for a grading contractor on the Dakota Southern Railway, built in 1872. George W. Gilbert became the first post- master on 29 April 1873, Prior to that Lincoln Post Office, Charles M. Taylor, Postmaster, 27 July 1864 was nearby to the south. In 1869, it was a mile southwest and in 1889, four miles south. Hans S. Myron was the Lincoln Post- master from 1873 to 1893. Erected 1966 by Citizens State Bank & State Highway Commission

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spirit Mound Historic Prairie — 5.9 mi
  A lone hill north of Vermillion that Lewis and Clark walked to on a scorching day in 1804, now one of the few places left where you can stand exactly where they stood.
• National Music Museum — 8.3 mi
  One of the great collections of musical instruments in the world, on a college campus in a prairie town, built around a band teacher's thousands of horns, fiddles and curiosities.
• Ponca State Park — 25 mi
  Oak ravines and bluffs at the downstream end of the Missouri's last unchannelized reach in Nebraska, with a three-state overlook and the river's resource and education center.

More markers nearby

• Post Vermillion or Dickson's Post — 5.4 mi
• Vermillion — 7.7 mi
• Andrew Lee — 8.1 mi
• Grand Officers — 8.3 mi