Spalding Nebraska

Village · Greeley County · Population 408 (2020 census) · ZIP 68665 · Founded 1881 · Peak population 878 (1920)

About Spalding

Spalding is a village of 408 people (2020), the largest in Greeley County, in the Cedar River valley at the edge of the Sandhills in the northeast corner of the county, at about 1,910 feet. NE 91 runs through town, splitting from US 281 a few miles west and running east toward Primrose and Albion. Greeley is about 13 miles southwest. Spalding has the elementary and middle schools of Riverside Public Schools, Spalding Academy, a clinic, two bank branches, a nine-hole golf course, the village-owned hydroelectric plant on the Cedar River, a city-park campground and the Greeley County Fair each August. Spalding is on Central Time.

History

Bishop John Lancaster Spalding of Peoria, Bishop John Ireland and Bishop James O'Connor organized the Irish Catholic Colonization Association, incorporated in 1879, which bought about 25,000 acres from the Burlington & Missouri in central Greeley County. The town site was platted in 1880, and in 1881 the Halifax post office, about half a mile east, moved to it; the town was named for Bishop Spalding, the association's president. The Union Pacific had reached Spalding by 1917, when it had about 80 businesses, two banks, two newspapers, a library, an opera house, the Hotel Spalding, a creamery and a flour mill. St. Michael's parish built a frame church in 1882 and a brick one in 1890–91; the present church, by Omaha architect James Henry Craddock, was begun in 1909 and dedicated on September 29, 1914, and the academy building (1912–13) and convent (1926–27) followed. The village's hydroelectric plant and dam on the Cedar River went into service in 1919. Spalding reached 878 people in 1920. Tompall Glaser, born here in 1933, and his brothers Chuck and Jim grew up near Spalding before forming Tompall & the Glaser Brothers in Nashville; NFL defensive end Gene Cronin, born here in 1933, played for the Detroit Lions and the first Dallas Cowboys team.

Things to see

the St. Michael's Catholic Church Complex, 150 E. Marguerite St.: the 1914 Gothic Revival church, academy, convent and grotto (National Register) · the Spalding Power Plant and Dam on the Cedar River (National Register), still run by the village · Cottonwood Greens Golf Course, nine holes on Veterans Drive, (308) 497-2151 · the city-park campground on Creamery Street: electric sites and a dump station · the Greeley County Fair in early August · canoeing and fishing on the Cedar River

An Irish Catholic colonization-era village on the Cedar River, home to a National Register-listed 1919 hydroelectric dam.