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Auburn is the county seat of Nemaha County, with a 2020 census population of 3,470. The city was formed on May 1, 1882, when the neighboring towns of Sheridan and Calvert merged under the leadership of Church Howe and Charles Nixon, absorbing the earlier community of St. George; the new town took the county seat away from Brownville on February 27, 1883, and was named after Auburn, New York.
U.S. Highway 136 runs through Auburn as Central Avenue, and the city has been Nebraska’s first Tree City USA since 1976. Auburn is the birthplace of Charles Hiram Randall, the only person elected to the U.S. Congress as a member of the Prohibitionist Party, and from 1910 to 1913 it fielded the Auburn Athletics minor league baseball team at what is now Legion Memorial Park, a National Register of Historic Places site. The Nemaha Valley Museum preserves the area’s local history and genealogy records.
Adjacent Counties
- Otoe County (north)
- Johnson County (west)
- Pawnee County (southwest)
- Richardson County (south)
- Atchison County, Missouri (east)
- Holt County, Missouri (southeast)
Nearby Towns
- Peru — home to Peru State College, about 11 miles northeast via NE-67
- Brownville — a historic Missouri River town and Nemaha County’s original county seat, about 10 miles east via US-136
Points of Interest
Auburn’s courthouse square and Nemaha County’s nineteenth-century roots are anchored by a National Register-listed city park and a hometown museum of local history.
Major Attractions
- Nemaha Valley Museum — local history and genealogy exhibits at 1423 19th St, open Wednesday–Sunday, 1–4:30 p.m., mid-April through mid-November.
- Legion Memorial Park — a National Register of Historic Places park set aside by Auburn’s founders in 1883, with a WPA-era band shell, playground, picnic shelter, and arched entrance built in the late 1930s; Robert F. Kennedy addressed a crowd of about 2,000 here during his 1968 presidential campaign.
Events
Nemaha County Fair (early August) — an annual 4-H, FFA, and open-class county fair with carnival rides, a parade, and nightly entertainment at the county fairgrounds, organized by the Nemaha County Agricultural Society.
The county seat of Nemaha County, home to about 3,470 people along U.S. Highway 136, with a National Register-listed city park and the Nemaha Valley Museum of local history.
Navigate & Explore Auburn
Get directions to Auburn: Waze → · Google Maps →
Road Conditions: Nebraska 511 — 511.nebraska.gov
Cameras: View Nemaha County Cameras →