Frontier County, Nebraska

Frontier County, Nebraska

County seat: Stockville · Created and organized: January 1872 · Named for: its place on the frontier of settlement · License plates: prefix 60 · Population: 2,519 (2020 census); peak 8,781 in 1900 · Area: 980 sq mi · Time zone: Central

About Frontier County

Frontier County is loess tableland and ranch country cut by the canyons of Medicine Creek and Red Willow Creek, in southwestern Nebraska. Its city is Curtis, home of the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture; its villages are Stockville, the county seat, and Eustis, Maywood and Moorefield. It borders Lincoln County on the north, Dawson on the northeast, Gosper on the east, Furnas on the southeast, Red Willow on the south, Hitchcock on the southwest and Hayes on the west.

Cattlemen organized the county in January 1872 at a meeting in Henry Clifford’s lodge near Stockville, and Stockville has been the seat ever since. The Burlington’s Holdrege–Sterling line reached Curtis in 1885 and its towns were platted in 1886, but it bypassed Stockville; Curtis tried to take the seat in 1920, 1930 and around 1950 and never succeeded. The 1888–89 frame courthouse still stands, and in 1962 Stockville became the last county seat in America reached by a paved road. Both of the area’s big Bureau of Reclamation reservoirs, Harry Strunk Lake and Hugh Butler Lake, lie in Frontier County. The county’s two National Register listings are the Red Smoke and Mowry Bluff archeological sites.

Towns of Frontier County

Travel Corridors

US 83 crosses the western edge of the county by Maywood, between McCook and North Platte. US 83 Corridor → NE 23 runs east–west through Maywood, Curtis, Moorefield and Eustis; NE 18 runs from Curtis southeast through Stockville toward Elwood (partly gravel); and NE 21 runs north from Eustis to Cozad and I-80.

Cameras: View Frontier County cameras → · Road conditions: Nebraska 511

Parks and Outdoors

Medicine Creek State Recreation Area surrounds Harry Strunk Lake, 1,768 acres behind a Bureau of Reclamation dam completed in 1949, about 10 miles north of Cambridge: 72 electric and 34 basic campsites, four cabins, three boat ramps, a swim beach, disc golf and an archery range, with thousands of acres of public hunting land around it. Red Willow Reservoir State Recreation Area, about 10 miles northwest of McCook, surrounds Hugh Butler Lake, 1,628 acres behind a 1962 dam: 48 electric campsites, three ramps, a swim beach, trails and a 20-target archery range. Gallagher Canyon and Midway Canyon, near Eustis, are just over the line in Dawson County. Curtis has a city pool, the Arrowhead Meadows golf course and a campground at Mill Park.

Things to See

In Curtis: the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture, the Hansen Memorial Museum and the Frontier County Historical Society. In Stockville: the 1888–89 courthouse and the Frontier County historical marker on NE 18. In Eustis: Wurst Tag each June.

Frontier County Business Directory

Businesses within 20 miles of: Curtis · Eustis · Maywood · All listings →

Adjacent Counties

Lincoln County (north) · Dawson County (northeast) · Gosper County (east) · Furnas County (southeast) · Red Willow County (south) · Hitchcock County (southwest) · Hayes County (west).

Events

The Curtis Easter Pageant has been staged each Palm Sunday since 1958. Eustis holds Wurst Tag on the second Saturday of June and its fair and corn show in early August. The Frontier County Fair is held at Stockville around the turn of July and August (July 30–August 2 in 2026).

Frontier County at a Glance

Frontier County, Nebraska — created and organized in January 1872, when cattlemen met at Henry Clifford’s lodge on the Medicine, about 3 miles from Stockville, and organized the county so a herd law would make farmers fence their crops. It is named for the frontier itself. County seat Stockville, population 25. The population peaked at 8,781 in 1900 and stands at 2,519. 115 listings across 5 towns.

Stockville never lost a county-seat election. When the Burlington built across the county in 1885–86 it went to Curtis instead, and Curtis grew while Stockville did not. Curtis challenged for the seat in 1920, 1930 and around 1950, and every attempt failed. The frame courthouse of 1888–89 still stands in a village of two dozen people, and in 1962 Stockville became the last county seat in America to be reached by a paved highway.

Getting there: US 83 along the west edge, NE 23 east–west through Maywood, Curtis, Moorefield and Eustis, NE 18 from Curtis through Stockville, and NE 21 north from Eustis. The drainage is Medicine Creek, which rises in southern Lincoln County and runs southeast to the Republican at Cambridge, and Red Willow Creek. Both cut steep canyons through rolling loess tableland, and this is heavy ranch country. Stockville sits at 2,484 feet. Central Time.

Both of the area’s big federal reservoirs are in this county. Harry Strunk Lake behind Medicine Creek Dam, built by the Bureau of Reclamation in 1948–49 and 165 feet high, is a 1,768-acre lake with 29 miles of shoreline in southeastern Frontier County, not Furnas; Cambridge is only the nearest town. Hugh Butler Lake behind Red Willow Dam, about ten miles northwest of McCook, is also in Frontier County despite its name: 1,628 acres behind a dam built in 1960–62 and repaired after a sinkhole was found in 2009.

Some of the oldest traces of people in Nebraska are here. The Lime Creek site, excavated before Harry Strunk Lake filled, is a Paleo-Indian site roughly 9,000 to 13,000 years old; the Red Smoke site near Stockville (7,000 to 9,000 years old) and the Mowry Bluff site, a village of the 1100s, went on the National Register in 1974.

For visitors: the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture at Curtis, a University of Nebraska campus opened in 1913; the Curtis Easter Pageant each Palm Sunday, which is why the town calls itself Nebraska’s Easter City; Eustis’s German Wurst Tag; the Frontier County Historical Society and the Hansen Memorial Museum in Curtis; and the county fair at Stockville. Born here — and both in Eustis: Clayton Yeutter (1930), U.S. Trade Representative and then Secretary of Agriculture, 1989–91; and Ralph G. Brooks (1898), governor of Nebraska from 1959 until he died in office in 1960.