Pioneer Crossing

The plaque's 1908 span was not the first steel bridge on Turkey Creek. About a mile and a third south-southeast of here is one the county ordered in 1899, when the commissioners asked for an iron or steel bridge just west of G. Abraham's place and, on September 5, gave the contract to the Canton Bridge Company of Ohio, with steel rolled in Pittsburgh. It is a truss-leg bedstead, its end posts carried down to serve as legs, a cheap design that floods and collisions wiped out across Nebraska. Its 46-foot span is one of the few left.

What the plaque says

Pioneer Crossing Crossing streams and rivers, in a region where roads were but trails and bridges were unknown, was a major problem to emigrants traveling by team and wagon. It was usually necessary to find or construct a ford such as Wilson's or Pioneer Crossing. At an unknown date, a grading was cut in the steep banks of Turkey Creek near here so that wagons could cross from one side to the other with relative ease. Logs were bound together with wire and tied to large trees on both banks, forming a bridge over which the wagons could be driven. Occasionally, however, high water would force the pioneers to camp on the banks of Turkey Creek until the water subsided. The area was first settled in the 1870's. Andrew Wilson, upon whose land the ford was located and from whom it received its name, received his final home- stead patent for this land in 1884. During the 1880's, the name of the ford gradually changed from Wilson's to Pioneer Crossing, as most of those using it were westward bound pioneers. A steel bridge was built across Turkey Creek at this site in 1908. Alma Chamber of Commerce Historical Land Mark Council

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Harlan County Lake — 19 mi
  Nebraska's second-largest lake, held behind an Army Corps dam on the Republican between Alma and Republican City, built after the flood of 1935 ran bluff to bluff.
• Fort Kearny State Historical Park — 29 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

• Atlanta Prisoner-of-War Camp — 7.8 mi
• Site of Old Sacramento — 8.0 mi
• Phelps County — 9.2 mi
• First Site of Bethel Lutheran Church and Cemetery — 10.0 mi