Nehawka Flint Quarries

The pits were first taken for mines of another kind. French trappers told of abandoned Spanish silver or lead mines on the Weeping Water, and later expeditions found no trace of metal. Isaac Pollard, from Vermont, settled on the site in 1856, and in 1900 he paid for a cut sixty feet long, six wide and ten deep. It turned up broken limestone boulders stripped of their flint nodules, and over the next two years E. F. Blackman of the State Historical Society and three Minnesota scientists named the workings ancient flint mines.

What the plaque says

The Nehawka Flint Quarries Flint nodules embedded within subsurface Pennsylvanian Formation limestone deposits in this vicinity were an important source of stone used for the manufacture of tools and weapons by Nebraska's prehistoric inhabitants. Several intact quarry pits remain north of the village of Nehawka, while others southwest of the village have been destroyed by limestone mining. Flint deposits are also exposed in local creek banks, where mining by prehistoric peoples is also evident. Artifacts recovered from the quarry sites by archeologists date from about 500 to 5,000 years in age. Major users of the flint from the quarries belonged to the Central Plains Tradition, prehistoric farmers who inhabited small earthlodge settlements in east central Nebraska and western Iowa from about 1000 to 1400 A.D. Flint similar to that in the Nehawka quarries has been discovered at dozens of Central Plains Tradition sites, as well as those occupied by other cultures. Its wide distribution indicates that Nehawka flint was an important article of trade among prehistoric peoples in the central Great Plains. The Nehawka Flint Quarries have been listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Village of Nehawka Nebraska State Historical Society, 2014

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arbor Lodge State Historical Park — 12 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.
• Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum — 21 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. Air Force Atlas Missile Site — 11 mi
• St. Patrick's Cemetery — 12 mi
• Russell, Majors, & Waddell House — 12 mi
• Nebraska City — 13 mi