Prisoners of War in Hitchcock County

Palisade's prisoners lived in borrowed buildings. According to the McCook Gazette's 2006 account, the men were housed for a time in the building that is now the Last Resort, then in the bus barn, and finally in buildings on the east side of Main Street. The marker stands in front of the last of them, a vacant tan-brick front with boarded garage doors. The Indianola base camp lay about thirty-seven miles east. While the Palisade camps were open, prisoners worked on 151 farms in the area.

What the plaque says

Prisoners of War in Hitchcock County In January 1944 German prisoners of war from the Indianola camp came to a side camp here to help area farmers complete the 1943 corn harvest. Over the next two years the Palisade camp was activated and deactivated as needed to supply labor to harvest crops or work in beet fields. Farmers contracted with the government and paid the prisoners' wages. In December 1945 the camp closed for the last time, and POWs were returned to Camp Atlanta near Holdrege, Nebraska. Hansen Charitable Foundation Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Massacre Canyon Monument — 12 mi
  A granite shaft east of Trenton above the canyon where Lakota warriors attacked a Pawnee buffalo-hunting camp on August 5, 1873, a year before the Pawnee left Nebraska.

More markers nearby

• Massacre Canyon — 12 mi
• The Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express — 15 mi
• Culbertson, First Hitchcock County Seat — 16 mi
• Stone Church — 22 mi