Nebraska City

Nebraska City was four towns before it was one. The territorial legislature incorporated it on March 2, 1855, and in the first election that May, Dr. Henry Bradford won the mayor's chair with 36 votes to M. W. Brown's 24. Kearney, laid out beside it on South Table Creek, organized separately in the winter of 1856-57 under Mayor Mills S. Reeves. South Nebraska City organized in May 1857, and Prairie City, surveyed by John A. Goodlette, followed in August 1858. The 1882 Andreas history records all four united that same year.

What the plaque says

Nebraska City Permanent settlement in this area dates from 1846, with the establishment of old Fort Kearny on Table Creek. Nebraska City, founded in 1854, became an important depot for military and commercial freighting. Pioneer businessmen, such as S. F. Nuckolls, sought to attract freighting interests. In 1858, Alexander Majors, of Russell, Majors and Waddell, decided to use Nebraska City as the point of departure for shipping military supplies west. Steamboats brought rapidly growing volumes of goods and numbers of people heading west. In 1865, it was reported that up to 40 million pounds of freight were shipped west from Nebraska City. In 1860, a direct road to new Fort Kearny on the Platte was completed, shortening that journey by forty miles. Known as the Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Cut-off and also as the Great Central Route, the trail was originally marked by a furrow ploughed in the sod. Another name for this trail, the Steam Wagon Road, resulted from an 1862 experiment. That summer, a locomotive-like "Steam Wagon" attempted to haul cargo to Denver, but soon broke down and was abandoned. With the building of the Union Pacific Railroad, overland freighting from Nebraska City soon gave way to railroad shipment. Otoe County Historical Society Historical Land Mark Council

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arbor Lodge State Historical Park — 0.7 mi
  J. Sterling Morton's estate in Nebraska City, a four-room house of 1855 grown to 52 rooms among the trees he planted, home of the man who proposed Arbor Day in 1872.
• Brownville — 22 mi
  A Missouri River town of 1854 that bet on a railroad and lost, kept its arts through the decline, and now has Nebraska's oldest repertory theatre and a 1932 steam dredge on the bank.
• Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum — 33 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

• Mayhew Cabin, 1855 — steps away
• The Kregel Windmill Factory — 0.5 mi
• Russell, Majors, & Waddell House — 0.7 mi
• The First United Methodist Church of Nebraska City — 0.7 mi