Russell, Majors, & Waddell House

Majors told the Nebraska City story himself in his 1893 memoir, Seventy Years on the Frontier. The firm's 1858 army contract for Utah carried his own condition, a second starting point besides Fort Leavenworth, because no single depot had herding ground for that many cattle. With Lieutenant Dubarry of the Quartermaster's Department he went up the Missouri as far as Plattsmouth and chose Nebraska City, whose citizens agreed to build warehouses. The 1858 Utah supplies came to over sixteen million pounds and 3,500 wagons. In the spring of 1860 he bought out his partners.

What the plaque says

Russell, Majors, & Waddell House The U.S. Army built this house in 1858 as the residence of Quartermaster Major James Martin. The house was sold in 1859 to the Russell, Majors, and Waddell Freighting Company. The company had a contract to haul supplies to military posts. It used the house as an office while Alexander Majors and his family lived temporarily on the second floor. With the company's closure in 1865, the house was a private home until it became a museum in 1985. Nebraska City Historical Society PJAD Wirth Foundation Nebraska State Historical Society, 2018

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arbor Lodge State Historical Park — 1.0 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

• The Kregel Windmill Factory — 0.2 mi
• The First United Methodist Church of Nebraska City — 0.3 mi
• Mayhew Cabin, 1855 — 0.6 mi
• Nebraska City — 0.7 mi