St. John's, 1856

St. John's nearly took the county seat. In a removal vote on August 2, 1858, it drew 263 votes to Dakota City's 260 of 569 cast, but with no majority for moving, the seat stayed at Dakota City. On July 15, 1860, a tornado out of the west destroyed the colony's St. Patrick's Church and other buildings, according to Henry Casper's history of the Catholic Church in Nebraska, and the church was rebuilt at Jackson. That same year Joseph Brannan, giving up hope for St. John's, moved his store to the new town.

What the plaque says

St. John's 1856 About 1 1/2 miles north of this spot is the abandoned site of "Old St. John's", one of the first towns established in Dakota County. The townsite was settled on June 2, 1856 by the Father Trecy Colony--60 people, with eighteen ox- drawn covered wagons. The site was surveyed and platted June 24, 1856, and the town was named St. John's, in honor of St. John the Baptist. The Colony was led by Father Jeremiah Trecy, a young Catholic Priest from the Garryowen Parish near Dubuque, Iowa. Consisting mostly of Irish immigrants, it constituted the first Catholic parish in Nebraska. The town of St. John's grew rapidly and by 1858 it had two hundred inhabitants. In 1860 Father Trecy went to Washington seeking permission to establish a mission among the Ponca Indians. Meanwhile the Civil War began. Father Trecy became an army chaplain, and never returned to his beloved Colony. In the early sixties, the Missouri River began to threaten St. John's. The people began moving their buildings to the new town of Jackson. By 1866 all buildings were gone and the townsite was abandoned. The site of St. John's still exists as a symbol of courage and hope and of the religious faith of a dedicated people. Dakota County Historical Society Historical Land Mark Council

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ponca State Park — 12 mi
  Oak ravines and bluffs at the downstream end of the Missouri's last unchannelized reach in Nebraska, with a three-state overlook and the river's resource and education center.
• Blackbird Scenic Overlook — 26 mi
  A pull-off on US-75 at Macy on the Umóⁿhoⁿ reservation, looking over the Missouri valley toward the hill where Wazhiⁿga' sabe, Blackbird, was buried after the smallpox of 1800.
• National Music Museum — 30 mi
  One of the great collections of musical instruments in the world, on a college campus in a prairie town, built around a band teacher's thousands of horns, fiddles and curiosities.

More markers nearby

• Lewis and Clark Campsite: August 21, 1804 — 1.4 mi
• You Are Now Entering South Dakota — 6.8 mi
• Territorial Church — 7.9 mi
• Tonwantonga — 8.3 mi