Original Townsite of Wood River

James Jackson, the storekeeper the plaque follows, was born in England in 1837 and reached Wood River in 1860, joining Irish farmers that included the three Moores. A. T. Andreas's 1882 history has him starting in a dugout and, unable to afford a team and buggy, rigging a seat and shafts to his wagon's front axle behind a fast-trotting ox. He opened his store in 1864 with $2,000 in stock, sat as county commissioner from 1870 and sold 450 cattle in 1874. In 1869 he killed a wild buffalo where the present village stands.

What the plaque says

Original Townsite of Wood River Between 1844 and 1866 thousands of emigrants, gold seekers, and Mormons moved west through the Platte Valley. The first settlers along Wood River 1858-60 operated road ranches to serve travelers. They included Patrick, Richard, and Anthony Moore; James Jackson; and a Mormon, Joseph E. Johnson. In this immediate vicinity was Jackson's store, opened about 1864, and Moore's Ranche. Johnson's Ranche, also known as Wood River Center, was at the present site of Shelton, Nebraska. The original town of Wood River, named for the tree-lined river directly north, was platted around a station established here by the Union Pacific Railroad in 1866. Jackson moved his store to the settlement, and a log Catholic Church and settlers' school were built by 1869. In 1874-75 the Union Pacific platted the pres- ent town of Wood River about three miles east. The station, post office and Jackson's store were placed on skids and moved to the new location. In 1990 only St. Mary's Cemetery and the District 5 school marked the original townsite. Hall County Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rowe Sanctuary — 15 mi
  Audubon's sanctuary on the Platte near Gibbon, where the river's sandbars are kept bare so that sandhill cranes, more than a million in the valley each spring, can roost safely at night.
• Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer — 16 mi
  Edward Durell Stone's island pavilion in Grand Island and an 1890s railroad town of moved buildings, among them the cottage where Henry Fonda was born in 1905.
• Fort Kearny State Historical Park — 22 mi
  The 1848 army post on the Platte, built on a strip of Pawnee land bought for $2,000 in goods, where emigrant wagons passed by the thousand and only the cottonwoods outlasted the fort.

More markers nearby

• Joseph E. Johnson and The Huntsman's Echo — 4.6 mi
• B-17 Crash, 1943 — 6.0 mi
• Martin Brothers — 8.5 mi
• Sandhill Cranes — 8.8 mi