St. Joseph and Grand Island Railroad

The track through Doniphan was laid in 1879 as the Hastings and Grand Island Railroad and sold almost at once to the St. Joseph and Western, which ran from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Hastings. That company went bankrupt in 1884, and the Union Pacific reorganized it the next year as the St. Joseph and Grand Island. The Union Pacific lost control in 1898, regained it in 1906 and added a link from Marysville, Kansas, to Topeka. The road's Hastings to Marysville segment is now Union Pacific main line, carrying dozens of trains a day.

What the plaque says

St. Joseph and Grand Island Railroad In 1879 construction of tracks connecting the Union Pacific's main line at Grand Island with the St. Joseph and Western Railroad at Hastings pro- vided a key link in a railroad empire controlled by New York financier, Jay Gould. The link freed the Union Pacific from the competition of connecting lines at its eastern terminus in Omaha by providing a route bypassing Iowa. Like other railroads built throughout Nebraska in the 1880s, the St. Joe contributed to local settlement and development. In 1879 local pioneer William J. Burger platted the town of Doniphan midway between Grand Island and Hastings. The village and township were named after Col. John Doniphan of St. Joseph, Missouri, an attorney for the railroad. After completion of the Grand Island line, the railroad was reorganized as the St. Joseph and Grand Island Railroad and for most of its history was part of the Union Pacific system. Construction of a Hastings to Gibbon cutoff in 1914 provided a shorter route to the Union Pacific main line, and use of the line through Doniphan gradually declined. It was abandoned in 1989. Hall County Historical Society Nebraska State Historical Society Village of Doniphan Doniphan Township Nebraska Department of Roads

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer — 7.6 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.

More markers nearby

• Conflict of 1867 — 2.2 mi
• Grand Island — 4.2 mi
• Grand Island — 5.2 mi
• Sandhill Cranes — 6.5 mi