South Central

Adams County at a Glance

Adams County, Nebraska — created February 16, 1867, organized December 12, 1871, and named for President John Adams. County seat Hastings. Population 31,205 in 2020, close to its 2010 peak of 31,364. 388 listings across 12 towns.

The county seat was settled by a railroad and a refusal. Juniata, the first seat, voted down bonds for the St. Joseph & Denver City in 1872, and the railroad crossed the Burlington seven miles east instead, on Walter Micklen’s homestead. Hastings, platted that October and named for railroad contractor Col. Thomas D. Hastings, won the county seat in 1877 after a five-year fight; the records left Juniata on September 27, 1878.

Getting there: US 6 and US 34 cross the county east–west, and US 281 runs north–south through Hastings, carrying US 34 north on the Tom Osborne Expressway to I-80 at Grand Island. NE 74 crosses the south. I-80 itself stays north of the county. Central Time.

Two Hastings stories went national. Edwin Perkins sold a bottled drink concentrate called Fruit Smack until, in 1927, he took the water out and sold the powder as Kool-Ade, ten cents a packet, later a nickel; he moved to Chicago in 1931 and sold the brand to General Foods in 1953. In 1942 the Navy began its largest inland ammunition depot on nearly 49,000 acres of Adams and Clay County farmland; about 10,000 people worked there by V-J Day, filling shells that made up nearly 40 percent of the Navy’s ordnance at one point, and a September 1944 explosion killed nine. Hastings was named an American World War II Heritage City in 2023.

For visitors: the Hastings Museum, which calls itself the largest municipal museum between Chicago and Denver; the 1902 Burlington depot, still an Amtrak stop; Kool-Aid Days in August; and the Thirty-Two Mile Station site southwest of town, a Pony Express home station in 1860–61. Born or raised here: Kool-Aid inventor Edwin Perkins (who moved to Hastings in 1920), actress Sandy Dennis (born in Hastings, raised in Kenesaw), Interior Secretary Fred A. Seaton and composer Neal Hefti.

Chase County at a Glance

Chase County, Nebraska — high plains on the Colorado line, along Frenchman Creek. County seat Imperial; Mountain Time.

Getting there: US 6 from Holyoke, Colorado, and McCook; NE 61 from Grant and Benkelman.

For visitors: the courthouse in Imperial, Champion Mill and the county museum in Champion, the Wauneta Roller Mills, and Enders Reservoir. Hospital: Chase County Community Hospital in Imperial.

Clay County at a Glance

Clay County, Nebraska — created February 16, 1867, organized in 1871 and named for Kentucky statesman Henry Clay. County seat Clay Center. Population 6,104 in 2020, well below its 1890 peak of 16,310. 220 listings across 13 towns.

The courthouse moved in a hurry. Sutton won the first election in 1871, but in 1879 a town site company laid out Clay Center at the exact middle of the county; its backers voided votes, impeached a county judge who refused to move, lost in the Nebraska Supreme Court and carted the records off anyway, with a barbecue on October 31. Four days later Clay Center won the election that made it legal, 1,967 votes to Harvard’s 1,867.

Getting there: US 6 crosses the north through Sutton and past Harvard; NE 14 runs north–south through Fairfield and Clay Center to I-80 at Aurora; NE 41 heads east from Clay Center and NE 74 crosses the south. Central Time.

For visitors: the spring migration in the Rainwater Basin, with 16 federal waterfowl production areas and six state wildlife areas in the county; the Sutton Nebraska Museum; the Fairfield Opera House Brewery & Grill; and the county fair and Old Trusty engine show in Clay Center. Born or raised here: Hall of Fame manager Billy Southworth (born near Harvard), Governor Samuel McKelvie (born near Fairfield) and Medal of Honor recipient Jacob Volz (raised in Sutton).

Dundy County at a Glance

Dundy County, Nebraska — the southwest corner of the state, where the Republican River begins. County seat Benkelman; Mountain Time.

Getting there: US 34 along the river from Colorado and McCook, NE 61 from Imperial and Kansas, NE 27 from St. Francis, Kansas.

For visitors: the courthouse and Zorn Theatre in Benkelman, the Haigler museums, Texas Trail Canyon, Rock Creek Lake and its trout hatchery, and the three-state corner. Hospital: Dundy County Hospital in Benkelman.

Fillmore County at a Glance

Fillmore County, Nebraska — created January 26, 1856, by the territorial legislature and named for President Millard Fillmore; organized March 15, 1871. County seat Geneva. Population 5,551 at the 2020 census (peak 16,022 in 1890). 192 listings across 8 towns.

Geneva holds Nebraska’s record high temperature, 118°F on July 15, 1934. Fairmont Army Air Field trained B-24, B-17 and B-29 crews in World War II.

Getting there: US 81 runs north from Geneva to I-80 at York, about 24 miles; US 6 crosses the north. Central Time.

Born here: Nobel economist Robert B. Wilson and Oklahoma reformer Kate Barnard (Geneva), CNN’s Jeff Zeleny and Judge Richard A. Dier (Exeter), and ballplayer Eddie Brown (Milligan).

Franklin County at a Glance

Franklin County, Nebraska — on the Kansas line along the Republican River, just east of Harlan County Lake. County seat Franklin, with six villages.

Getting there: US 136 along the Republican valley, NE 10 from Minden and I-80, and NE 4 across the north.

For visitors: Franklin's courthouse, City Park and county museum, Bloomington's rock jail and courthouse square, Naponee's octagon church near Harlan County Dam, and the Republican River bridge at Riverton. Hospital: Franklin County Memorial Hospital in Franklin.

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.

Furnas County at a Glance

Furnas County, Nebraska — on the Kansas line in the Republican valley of southwestern Nebraska. County seat Beaver City; largest town Cambridge.

Getting there: US 6/34 along the valley, US 283 from Lexington and I-80, US 136 east from Edison, and NE 89 across the south.

For visitors: Cambridge's museum, golf course and National Register bridge and house, Harry Strunk Lake just north, the Furnas-Gosper museum in Arapahoe, the Burton's Bend marker at Holbrook and the 1935 flood marker near Oxford. Hospital: Tri Valley Health System in Cambridge.

Gosper County at a Glance

Gosper County, Nebraska — organized on August 29, 1873, by proclamation of Governor Robert W. Furnas after settlers petitioned him, not by act of the Legislature, which is why sources disagree about its founding date. The Legislature caught up on March 2, 1881, legalizing the organization and defining the boundaries. County seat Elwood. Population peaked at 5,301 in 1900 and stands at 1,893, with lake homes at Johnson Lake holding up the count. 73 listings across 2 towns.

The man it is named for ended up running Arizona. John Jay Gosper, born in Ohio in 1842, enlisted in the 8th Illinois Cavalry, fought in some thirty engagements, served as quartermaster of the 29th U.S. Colored Infantry at the siege of Petersburg, and lost his left leg to a wound on December 4, 1864. He was Nebraska’s secretary of state in 1873–75. President Hayes made him secretary of Arizona Territory in 1877, and because Governor John C. Frémont was so often absent, Gosper served as acting governor for much of his term, during the Tombstone troubles. President Arthur gave the governorship to Frederick Tritle in 1882 instead. Gosper died penniless in a Los Angeles county hospital on May 14, 1913, and the Arizona Legislature appropriated $200 toward his funeral.

Three county seats in sixteen years, and a courthouse that was carried off. Daviesville was first but never built a courthouse. Homerville won the seat in 1882 and put up a two-story frame courthouse of lumber hauled from Arapahoe. After a bitterly contested election in November 1888 the seat went to Elwood, which the Burlington had reached in 1885, and in the spring of 1889 the Homerville courthouse itself was moved 8 miles to Elwood. It burned in 1895. Homerville and Daviesville are gone; only Homerville’s cemetery remains. The courthouse standing today is a 1939 Art Deco building by McClure & Walker of Kearney, paid for with a $42,000 bond and a Public Works Administration grant — one of seven Nebraska courthouses built through New Deal programs, and on the National Register since 1990. It is the county’s only National Register listing.

Getting there: US 283 runs north and south, with NE 23 and NE 18. Gosper County sits on the tableland divide between the Platte and the Republican, drained only by short creeks such as Plum Creek in the north, and its lakes are man-made, filled from the Platte through Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District canals. Elwood sits at 2,674 feet. Central Time. At 463 square miles it is a small county, and about 62 percent of its people live outside its two villages — most of them around the lake.

Outdoors: Johnson Lake, about 8 miles southwest of Lexington and 7 miles north of Elwood, is a canal reservoir built in 1939–41 and named for CNPPID engineer George E. Johnson, with more than 900 homes and cabins around it. All types of boats are allowed, which makes it a water-ski and powerboat destination. The state recreation area has three campgrounds, mostly with 50-amp service, and half the sites in the Main and South Inlet campgrounds can be reserved up to 180 days ahead from May 1 to October 15. Walleye, white bass and wiper. Three miles south, Elwood Reservoir was built in the late 1970s by pumping water from the E65 Canal: more than 1,300 surface acres, a 579-acre wildlife management area open to hunting, and a reputation as a top walleye fishery. Camping is not allowed on Elwood Reservoir land — that trips people up every season.

One correction worth making: the Furnas–Gosper Historical Society and Museum serves both counties but stands at Arapahoe, in Furnas County. Born here: John L. Champe (1895–1978) of Elwood, the University of Nebraska archaeologist known for his work at Ash Hollow Cave.

Harlan County at a Glance

Harlan County, Nebraska — on the Kansas line along the Republican River, home of Harlan County Lake, the state's second-largest. County seat Alma, with five villages.

Getting there: US 183 from I-80 at Kearney (41 mi to the dam), US 136 along the valley, NE 4 across the north and NE 89 in the southwest.

For visitors: the lake's campgrounds, marinas and trails; Alma's auditorium, Parrot Theatre and lakeside RV park; Orleans' historic hotel and county museum; three National Register truss bridges. Hospital: Harlan County Health System in Alma.

Hayes County at a Glance

Hayes County, Nebraska — created by the Legislature on February 19, 1877, and organized late in 1884, when officers appointed by Governor James W. Dawes met at LaForest, the home of LaForest Dyer on Blackwood Creek. Named for Rutherford B. Hayes, president at the time. County seat Hayes Center. The population peaked at 3,953 in 1890, recovered to 3,603 in 1930, and has fallen at every census since, to 856 in 2020. 60 listings across 16 towns.

The railroad never came to the county seat. Freight was hauled by wagon from Culbertson, in Hitchcock County, and then from Beverly; when the Burlington reached Palisade in 1891 it shortened the haul but never touched the interior. That shaped the county’s history: about fifteen former post offices and settlements, from Carrico and Estelle to Strickland and White, against three living villages.

Getting there: NE 25, NE 25A and US 6, with Spur 43A into Hamlet. Frenchman Creek crosses the south, Stinking Water Creek the west and Red Willow Creek the northeast. Hayes Center sits at 3,058 feet. Six counties border Hayes, all in Nebraska. Central Time.

The county seat was built to be one. An election on January 10, 1885, among Hayes Center, Estelle and LaForest gave no town a majority; the runoff on April 10, 1885, went to Hayes Center, a town put up by county-seat promoters and named for its place near the county’s center. Estelle, on Stinking Water Creek, had the post office, general store, blacksmith, harness shop and mill, and it is a ghost town now. The first county offices were two rooms rented for ten dollars a month.

The Grand Duke’s buffalo hunt happened here. On January 13–15, 1872, Grand Duke Alexis Alexandrovich, son of Tsar Alexander II, hunted buffalo on Red Willow Creek in a hunt arranged by General Philip Sheridan, with Generals George Custer and George Forsyth, William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody as guide, and Spotted Tail’s Brulé Sioux. Camp Alexis stood about a mile north of the History Nebraska marker, which is 4 miles east and 4 miles north of Hayes Center. Because the creek is called Red Willow, the hunt is often placed in Red Willow County, which lies to the east.

Outdoors: no state park, no state recreation area and no large reservoir. Hayes Center Wildlife Management Area — Camp Hayes — about 7 miles northeast of Hayes Center, has a lake of about 32 acres, camping, fishing and hunting. No nationally notable native has been verified for Hayes County, and we would rather say so than borrow a name from a town list. If you can document one, the county historical society at Hayes Center — and this directory — would like to hear from you.

Hitchcock County at a Glance

Hitchcock County, Nebraska — on the Kansas line in the Republican valley of southwestern Nebraska, home of Swanson Reservoir and Massacre Canyon. County seat Trenton; largest village Culbertson.

Getting there: US 34 along the river, US 6 from McCook through Culbertson and Palisade, NE 25 north–south through Trenton and NE 17 to Culbertson.

For visitors: Swanson Reservoir SRA, the Massacre Canyon monument, the county museum and Weyl Service Station in Trenton, the Stone Church south of Culbertson and the Little House Museum in Stratton. Clinics in Trenton and Stratton; hospitals in McCook and Benkelman.

Kearney County at a Glance

Kearney County, Nebraska — about 516 square miles of loess plain south of the Platte, created in 1860 and named for Fort Kearny, the first fort built to protect emigrants on the Oregon–California Trail. County seat Minden. Note that the city of Kearney is a different place, across the river in Buffalo County; the county and the city share the name of the fort, which is spelled with one e. 145 listings across 6 towns.

Three county seats in eighteen years. Kearney City — Dobytown, the rough outfitting town two miles west of the fort — was the first. When the county was reorganized on June 17, 1872, the new railroad town of Lowell won, 23 votes to 5, and briefly boomed as the end of track. Minden won a vote in November 1876, Lowell went to court, and the records finally moved in the spring of 1878. Lowell, which may have had 2,000 people at its peak, had about fifty by 1882.

Getting there: US 6 and US 34 run together through Axtell, Minden and Heartwell; NE 10 runs north from Minden to I-80; NE 44 serves Wilcox and Axtell; NE 74 runs east from Minden. I-80 lies just north, across the Platte. Central Time.

For visitors: Harold Warp Pioneer Village in Minden, opened in 1953 — 28 buildings on 20 acres, with about 350 antique cars, a hundred tractors and seventeen flying machines. Minden has been “Nebraska’s Christmas City” since 1915. Fort Kearny State Historical Park has a reconstructed stockade and, in spring, serves as the crane information center; as many as 20,000 sandhill cranes roost near the Fort Kearny hike-bike bridge in March, free to watch from the bridge with a park permit. Minden’s 118°F on July 24, 1936, ties the state record.

Born here: Gov. Norbert Tiemann and catcher Otto Miller (Minden); Sen. Carl T. Curtis and Pioneer Village founder Harold Warp were born on farms near Minden. Olympic rifle champion Gary Anderson grew up near Axtell.

Nuckolls County at a Glance

Nuckolls County, Nebraska — on the Kansas line between the Little Blue and the Republican. County seat Nelson; Superior is the largest city, with five villages.

Getting there: US 136 across the middle, NE 14 north from Kansas through Superior and Nelson, and NE 4 across the north.

For visitors: Superior's Victorian homes, downtown and county museum, Nelson's courthouse and stone faces, the Lawrence Opera House, and the Oregon Trail and 1864 raid sites at Oak. Hospital: Brodstone Healthcare in Superior.

Perkins County at a Glance

Perkins County, Nebraska — high wheat and corn country on the Colorado line, with no river. County seat Grant; Mountain Time.

Getting there: NE 23 from Holyoke, Colorado, and Wallace; NE 61 from Ogallala and I-80, and from Imperial.

For visitors: the courthouse, historic downtown, city park and county museum in Grant, and the Venango school. Hospital: Perkins County Health Services in Grant.

Phelps County at a Glance

Phelps County, Nebraska — organized on April 23, 1873, after an election called by Gov. Robert W. Furnas, and named for Capt. William Phelps (1808–1889), a Mississippi River steamboat captain. County seat Holdrege. Population peaked at 10,772 in 1900 and stands at 8,968, and that number is the story. 172 listings across 8 towns.

Phelps County did not empty out the way many of its neighbors did. It has held between 8,400 and 9,800 people continuously since 1930 and sits only about seventeen percent below its all-time peak. Irrigation is why. The Swedish families who settled here in the 1880s expected to find groundwater at 110 feet and found it at thirty. Platte River water from the Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District arrived in 1941, wells and center pivots followed, and the county gained people in the 1940s and 1950s and again in the 1970s.

The railroad did not just influence the county-seat fight; it built the winner. Williamsburg was the first seat in 1873, and the more central Phelps Center took it in 1879. Then the Burlington laid its line seven miles away and created the town of Holdrege. The first train came in on December 10, 1883, the town incorporated on February 14, 1884, and after a disputed election that year the county records reached Holdrege by January 1, 1885. Holdrege is named for George Ward Holdrege, the Burlington’s general manager, who never lived there.

Getting there: US 6, US 34 and US 183 cross the county, with NE 23. The Platte River forms the northern boundary; otherwise this is flat loess tableland on the divide between the Platte and Republican valleys, under center pivots nearly everywhere and part of the Rainwater Basin. Holdrege sits at 2,326 feet. BNSF runs the old Burlington line through town, and Amtrak’s California Zephyr stops there daily. Central Time.

Camp Atlanta held German prisoners of war. It started as a request from Holdrege’s New Industries Committee for a work camp to ease the wartime farm-labor shortage; a prisoner-of-war camp was built instead. Planning began in June 1943, and by November there were about seventy buildings and seven miles of concrete road across three compounds, built for 3,000 prisoners, with about 600 military and 130 civilian staff. The prisoners were German soldiers taken in North Africa and Italy, and they became valuable farm labor until the camp was wound up in 1945–46. One prisoner escaped and came back on his own. When the camp was dismantled, its concrete went into rip-rap for the irrigation canals.

For visitors: the Nebraska Prairie Museum a mile north of Holdrege on US 183 — period rooms, farm machinery, a Lutheran church, a one-room school, an early farmhouse, a windmill and a POW guard tower, plus a World War II Interpretive Center with a scale model of Camp Atlanta. It is the home of the National Sod House Society, and admission is free. Also here: the Plum Creek Massacre site north of Bertrand, where Cheyenne warriors attacked a train of twelve wagons on August 8, 1864 (an older marker says August 7), killing eleven or more men and carrying off Nancy Jane Morton and the boy Danny Marble. The site is south of the Platte, in Phelps County, though the station named Plum Creek gave its name to Lexington across the river. The Speakeasy at Sacramento is a longtime country restaurant.

Outdoors: no state park and no state recreation area; this is Rainwater Basin country. Sacramento-Wilcox WMA, southeast of Holdrege, covers about 2,320 acres of wetland, prairie and woodland; it was a giant Canada goose breeding site from 1967 to 1997 and has a handicapped-accessible hunting blind. The Funk Waterfowl Production Area is one of the premier birding sites in the basin, and endangered whooping cranes turn up there in spring. Johnson Lake and Elwood Reservoir, which travelers often connect with Holdrege, are in Gosper County.

Born here: Gen. Harry Schmidt (Holdrege, 1886), the Marine Corps general who commanded the 4th Marine Division and then the V Amphibious Corps at Tinian and Iwo Jima; Ralph D. Cornell (Holdrege, 1890), the landscape architect of Torrey Pines, the La Brea Tar Pits park and the UCLA campus; federal appeals judge John Robert Brown (Funk, 1909); and federal judge Warren K. Urbom (Atlanta, 1925).

Red Willow County at a Glance

Red Willow County, Nebraska — on the Kansas line in the Republican valley of southwestern Nebraska. County seat McCook, the regional center; Indianola was the first seat.

Getting there: US 6/34 along the valley, US 83 north–south through McCook, NE 89 across the south, Amtrak's California Zephyr and the McCook Ben Nelson Regional Airport.

For visitors: George Norris's home and the Frank Lloyd Wright house on Norris Avenue, the Museum of the High Plains, Hugh Butler Lake just north, the Indianola POW camp marker and the Danbury depot museum. Hospital: Community Hospital in McCook.

Webster County at a Glance

Webster County, Nebraska — Willa Cather country, on the Kansas line along the Republican River. County seat Red Cloud; Blue Hill is the other city, with Bladen, Guide Rock and Cowles the villages.

Getting there: US 281 from Hastings or Kansas, US 136 along the Republican valley, and NE 4 across the north.

For visitors: the National Willa Cather Center, her childhood home and the other Cather sites in Red Cloud, the Cather Memorial Prairie, the Pavelka Farmstead near Bladen, the Starke Round Barn, and the Pike-Pawnee marker at Guide Rock. Hospital: Webster County Community Hospital in Red Cloud.