Ghost cities abound in Nebraska

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Jul 1, 2022

Not all tales are about how the West was received. Most of the time, it was misplaced — with goals of getting wealthy fast and settlements that popped up in a single day each fading forgotten into historical past.

“Ghost city” is the time period that got here to embody this pattern, one abundantly frequent throughout Nebraska and the Midwest. Right now, Nebraska has 146 cities and 384 villages, in keeping with the state’s official web site. However Lilian Linder Fitzpatrick’s 1925 work, “Nebraska Place-Names,” makes an attempt to check the origins of how greater than 1,100 communities — a lot of which have been lengthy gone then — obtained their names.

Cities failed for quite a lot of causes. Many instances, pioneer politics over county seats and railroad routes performed a big function. In different situations, isolation and distance from different communities led settlements to regularly fade into the countryside and from reminiscence.

Although they might not understand it, most Nebraskans — particularly these with forebears who homesteaded — have a connection to a ghost city.

An incredible-great-grandfather of mine settled close to Mariaville, which is now on personal property in Rock County, and my Czechoslovakian ancestors who made it to Nebraska in 1870 are buried in Pischelville Nationwide Cemetery in Knox County.

We’ll take a fast journey to these forgotten communities and 13 different former cities that did not survive to the current day.

– John Schreier

1. Antioch (Sheridan County)

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Antioch embodies the “right here at this time, gone tomorrow” life that typified many younger settlements within the West.

The Sheridan County neighborhood was initially referred to as Reno, however confusion with the Nevada metropolis of the identical identify led its leaders to rename it Antioch, after the Ohio metropolis from which a distinguished household had lived.

The small city boomed from nothing to greater than 2,000 residents throughout World Warfare I, owing to massive deposits of potash — a potassium compound utilized in fertilizer and manufacturing — in alkali lakes close by, in keeping with Historical past Nebraska. Imports from Germany, now a hostile state, had beforehand supplied many of the potash utilized in the US, and companies sought to capitalize on the Sandhills’ bounty.

As rapidly because it rose to prominence, although, it light into obscurity after the conflict. With German imports far cheaper than Nebraska potash, the final plant closed for good in 1921. Seen alongside Nebraska 2 are concrete ruins of a potash processing facility, the remnants of this boomtown.

2. De Soto (Washington County)

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Famed for steamboat sinkings earlier than and in the course of the Civil Warfare, the early Missouri River city of De Soto might have foreseen its personal destiny.

The primary county seat of Washington County was established in late 1854 and formally included early the following 12 months. Seemingly in a single day, it boomed to boast a number of hundred residents, a dozen shops and taverns and three banks. Simply as rapidly, all three failed within the financial institution panic of 1857, with the Colorado gold rush convincing many residents to maneuver west.

And, as was the case with so many communities in that period, the railroad’s option to find elsewhere was a loss of life knell. The Sioux Metropolis and Pacific Railroad as a substitute constructed its personal city, Blair, which has lengthy succeeded De Soto because the county seat.

An 1881 historical past detailed how rapidly the increase city went bust, falling to merely 20 folks by that point — an illustration of how rapidly cities got here and went in Nebraska’s earliest years.

The De Soto identify lives on within the space, with the De Soto Bend Nationwide Wildlife Refuge alongside the Missouri River. In that park is an exhibit displaying many artifacts recovered from the Bertrand, one of many doomed steamboats.

3. DeWitty (Cherry County)

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Although the overwhelming majority of homesteaders lured to Nebraska by the promise of free land have been white, not all have been. Nowhere was that extra evident than DeWitty.

A vibrant neighborhood of roughly 200 African-Individuals, a few of whom have been slaves freed after the Civil Warfare, settled alongside the North Loup River within the northern Sandhills on what’s now U.S. 83. Although it wasn’t the state’s solely largely black neighborhood, it was essentially the most profitable.

Although little is left past a pioneer cemetery and a handful of constructing foundations, DeWitty — later renamed Audacious — as soon as boasted a submit workplace, faculty and quite a lot of companies. The college was notable as a result of it was built-in between black college students from DeWitty and white college students from close by Brownlee, which was all however extraordinary within the late nineteenth century.

Whereas the city now not exists, its reminiscence lives on by way of descendants and historians who share tales about Nebraska’s most distinguished black settlement.

4. Dobytown or Kearney Metropolis (Kearney County)

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Although the official identify for this small neighborhood three miles west of Fort Kearny was Kearney Metropolis, the identify Dobytown — a reference to the handful of earthen buildings that seemed to be constructed from adobe — caught.

In contrast to many settlements arrange for homesteaders, Dobytown sprung as much as present troopers and pioneers companies that weren’t typical of army bases. To cite the Historical past Nebraska marker on the city website: “Playing, liquor and disreputable women and men have been its principal sights.” Its well-known buyer was Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who despised its whiskey.

It turned the primary county seat of Kearney County when its borders have been established by the Legislature and had a metropolis authorities, seemingly in a single day.

The city boomed to grow to be a serious outfitting level on the western migration, along with a Pony Categorical station. However its days have been short-lived after the close by Union Pacific Railroad handed outdoors of city and drastically decreased visitors. Fort Kearny’s closure in 1871 sealed the demise of Dobytown, which was deserted shortly thereafter.

5. Hecla (Hooker County)

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Named after an Icelandic volcano by the Grand Island and Wyoming Central Railroad, the siding for cattle transportation grew right into a tiny city that continued for a number of a long time.

The Hooker County Historic Society notes the city by no means exceeded 11 everlasting residents. Regardless of its measurement, it had a normal retailer, pool corridor and faculty. These engaged on the railroad and cattle drives might practically triple its inhabitants — although they’d usually need to sleep within the retailer or a barn.

Although the depot closed within the Thirties, Hecla’s stockyards operated for an additional couple of a long time. By the Nineteen Sixties, nevertheless, nothing remained on the website the place the city had stood. A Historical past Nebraska marker now marks its former location alongside Nebraska 2.

6. Lemoyne (Keith County)

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In contrast to different ghost cities, a city named Lemoyne nonetheless exists in Nebraska. The small neighborhood, which boasted 82 residents within the 2010 Census, is nestled alongside the north shore of Lake McConaughy.

However that is the second iteration of Lemoyne. The primary, also known as Outdated Lemoyne, is deep beneath Nebraska’s largest lake.

Lemoyne Jacobs arrived within the space in 1875. He owned the land that will home the unique city website and tirelessly promoted it. His persistence paid off when it secured a Union Pacific rail line in 1909 earlier than being surveyed in 1911. Inside a decade, it boasted greater than 200 residents.

By 1937, nevertheless, the Tri-County Affiliation knowledgeable Lemoyne that the city needed to be relocated. A brand new mission would flood the land, requiring the younger city to maneuver to increased floor.

The Kingsley Dam, which was accomplished in 1941, compelled residents of the Keith County burg to relocate, and a number of other of its authentic buildings moved to New Lemoyne (although the “New” was way back dropped) or to different cities solely.

Throughout a drought that dropped Huge Mac’s water ranges to document lows in 2004, just a few items of the previous city website emerged. A few previous constructing foundations and different bits of the unique Lemoyne could possibly be seen for the primary time in practically seven a long time.

7. Mariaville (Rock County)

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Although the West was hardly the land of outlaws it is usually portrayed as being in motion pictures and TV reveals, they definitely existed on the Nebraska frontier. These characters have been much more complicated than portrayed.

Within the case of the short-lived city of Mariaville, one outlaw’s generosity is credited with serving to hold the city afloat.

The Peacock household was the primary to settle on this space of north-central Rock County, they usually opened the final retailer and submit workplace on the website. It was named Mariaville after their daughter, Hatti Maria. Naming city websites after the primary white youngster born was a standard apply.

A narrative handed down over the ages, which appeared within the 1988 Rock County Centennial ebook, credited infamous horse thief and convicted killer Doc Middleton — who later carried out in Buffalo Invoice’s Wild West Present — for purchasing dinner for his gang and slipping $10 to $20 underneath his plate after a meal.

This retailer was, for a time within the early 1900s, operated by my great-grandfather, who left his life as a physician in Chicago for the pioneer lifetime of Nebraska.

After a protracted, tough journey from their lifetime of luxurious, my great-great-grandparents got here to settle within the neighborhood of Mariaville. It was right here that my great-grandfather, whose love of the Sandhills’ wild magnificence and pure bounty has been handed down for generations, was born.

Whereas that custom endures, the shop and city itself are lengthy gone, positioned on personal property northwest of Newport.

8. Meadville (Keya Paha County)

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Not all ghost cities keep lifeless and buried endlessly — Meadville is proof of that.

The city on the north financial institution of the Niobrara River in Keya Paha County, named after Civil Warfare veteran and early settler Merritt Mead, was by no means massive, regardless of its early function as a cease for vacationers heading west.

But it surely endured all the hallmarks of communities that way back light from the map. First, it misplaced its submit workplace — twice. Then, its normal retailer closed, too. (We’ll get again to that.)

The hardest blow was the rerouting of Nebraska 7, which linked Ainsworth to Springview, that got here straight by way of Meadville. Although what’s referred to as Meadville Highway nonetheless exists, it is now not the main route it as soon as was after being largely changed by U.S. 183 just a few miles to the east.

Meadville was all however deserted for a while. However native businessmen resurrected the final retailer within the Nineties. Although the power not too long ago modified possession, it stays open.

With a park containing a well-liked river entry level, too, Meadville stays on the map regardless of being a ghost city for a few years.

9. Montrose (Sioux County)

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In Nebraska’s northwestern nook, a single constructing stays the place a city as soon as existed.

Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, inbuilt 1887, has stood alone for years, and the occasional Mass is widely known there. With out the church and its adjoining cemetery, although, no tangible reminder would mark the place Montrose — which peaked at 24 residents in 1910 — had been within the present-day Oglala Nationwide Grassland.

The city’s enduring declare to fame occurred earlier than it had even been platted.

Simply north of the long run townsite, a U.S. Military information shot, killed and scalped a Cheyenne warrior named Yellow Hand in an ambush throughout what turned referred to as the Battle of Warbonnet Creek. It was presupposed to be the person’s first kill, coming shortly after Gen. George Custer’s forces have been massacred at Little Bighorn.

The scene would play out again and again throughout stage reveals later hosted by that soldier, who had a distinguished residence within the state when he wasn’t touring the world. His identify was “Buffalo Invoice” Cody.

10. Nonpareil (Field Butte County)

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When voters in southern Dawes County, bored with traversing practically 60 miles to the courthouse in Chadron, elected to interrupt away and kind their very own county, Buchanan — later renamed Nonpareil — was the primary neighborhood to pop up within the new Field Butte County, named for a neighborhood landmark.

As such, the city — which took its second identify from a small newspaper sort, on condition that its founder, Eugene Heath, ran a newspaper — turned the primary county seat in 1886. Wikipedia muses that it is as a result of the city, like the kind, was so small, peaking at 50 residents.

An 1888 election to substantiate Nonpareil’s place wasn’t effectively obtained by the upstart city of Alliance, a lot in order that armed guards stood outdoors the courthouse to guard the data.

That distinction, nevertheless, can be short-lived. Nonpareil fell sufferer to the politics that dominated the settling of the West and led to the demise of many former county seats.

A land firm succeeded in bringing the county seat to Hemingford in an 1890 election. solely to see it moved to Alliance, the place it has since remained, in 1899. The courthouse was transported from Hemingford to Alliance by rail later that 12 months — on a rail line that missed Nonpareil.

Bohemian settlers constructed a second Nonpareil roughly 8.5 miles northwest of Hemingford. Data from the Knight Museum and Sandhills Middle in Alliance point out the city existed from about 1925 to 1946, and the previous faculty constructing close by remains to be standing.

Little marks the positioning of Field Butte County’s first townsite, nevertheless, and nothing marks its location alongside that very same railroad that bisects the county.

11. Pischelville (Knox County)

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Czech heritage stays sturdy in northwestern Knox County, close to the place the Niobrara River flows into the Missouri River.

Descendants of most of the first Czech immigrants who moved to that space of northeast Nebraska within the 1870s nonetheless stay in and farm their nook of what locals name the Bohemian Alps. Pischelville, named after early settler Anton Pischel, is one in every of a number of such defunct settlements within the space. Lots of them additionally bear Czech names.

Although the previous townsite is not any extra, its cemetery — designated as a nationwide Czech cemetery — connects previous with current. Interspersed among the many headstones with inscriptions in Czech are newer burials of their descendants who remained in northeast Nebraska.

My first ancestor who got here to Nebraska is buried amongst them. Despatched from Chicago to present-day Knox County by a Czech group, Jan Schreier — who later Americanized his first identify to “John” — and his household settled within the area in 1870 earlier than shifting into Verdigre. His great-great-great-grandchildren nonetheless stay close by.

12. Rock Bluffs (Cass County)

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Rock Bluffs, located between two hills alongside the Missouri River, was a serious participant in Nebraska’s earliest days, when it as soon as was a reputable rival to Omaha for energy. But, because the Journal Star wrote in 2016, the neighborhood “stumbled over about each impediment potential to development, dooming it (to) obscurity.”

Sometimes known as simply Rock Bluff, the city is marked by solely a cemetery and a former one-room schoolhouse that was transformed to a museum after it closed in 1969. They belie the truth that Rock Bluffs was as soon as a vibrant heart of commerce for riverboat visitors and different companies.

Whereas the last word trigger for its demise was that it was bypassed by the railroad — a standard story in that point — for Plattsmouth, Rock Bluffs’ historical past nonetheless intrigues.

The neighborhood was dwelling to world-champion boxer Perry Graves and a short-lived school referred to as the Naomi Institute. There are also tales of curses by Oto tribesmen forcibly faraway from their dwelling, a haunted cemetery and a pair of unsolved murders.

Although Rock Bluffs, one in every of 51 cities organized in Cass County that now not exist, is gone, a a lot newer settlement lives on simply to its west: Beaver Lake.

13. St. Deroin (Nemaha County)

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It is onerous to discover a extra accessible ghost city in Nebraska than St. Deroin. Based in 1854 as one of many earliest settlements in Nebraska Territory, it is positioned solely inside Indian Cave State Park.

Named after Joseph Deroin, a distinguished half-Oto dealer who owned the land it occupied, the city challenged Brownville’s declare to being the primary platted within the state. (The “Saint” was presumably added shortly thereafter, to evoke emotions of bigger cities St. Louis and St. Joseph.) Its namesake, a colourful and controversial character, was later shot and killed whereas trying to gather a $6 debt. His killer was acquitted.

Peaking in inhabitants within the 1870s at roughly 300, the city’s demise from that prime level was gradual. Floods eroded the Missouri River steamboat touchdown, finally forcing all visitors to Brownville, and the railroad elected to move St. Deroin by. A 1911 flood was its loss of life knell.

The college, which remained in operation till 1944 and was restored by the Nebraska Recreation and Parks Fee in 1978, is joined by the reportedly haunted St. Deroin Cemetery as the one seen reminders of the city that after occupied this common state park.

14. Sedan (Nuckolls County)

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Sedan is now not an included city, nevertheless it stays a hub for commerce in south-central Nebraska as a satellite tv for pc website for a neighborhood farmers co-op.

Based as Coy, the city opened its submit workplace in 1900. The identify was modified to Sedan, after a French metropolis, in 1906. By no means an enormous neighborhood, its inhabitants reached a high-water mark of 35 in 1950 earlier than fading into obscurity. The submit workplace closed three years later.

Nonetheless, Aurora Co-Op operates grain elevators in Sedan, though the positioning has a postal tackle of Edgar, a close-by city to its northwest. The elevators are seen from miles away, owing to the flat panorama within the space, and made headlines following an unintentional 2013 explosion during which two folks have been injured.

15. Spring Ranch (Clay County)

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Few ghost cities take that mantle as actually as Spring Ranch, which nonetheless commemorates a historical past that some take into account haunted.

Based in 1860 alongside the Little Blue River, within reach of the Oregon-California Path, Spring Ranch — also known as Spring Ranche in early texts, to distinguish itself from an precise ranch — started as a buying and selling submit for settlers heading west. The city that sprung up, although, was devastated by a Cheyenne and Sioux conflict raid in 1864 that left a number of folks lifeless.

Undeterred, a brand new Spring Ranch was inbuilt southwestern Clay County in 1870. Famous for its mill, it grew right into a small however hardy neighborhood of roughly 100 with the companies typical of cities in that period. 

In 1885, amid whispers {that a} widow named Elizabeth Taylor had murdered her husband and ordered a barn burned, a vigilante mob hanged Taylor and her brother Tom Jones earlier than they could possibly be tried in courtroom.

The specifics range from story to story, however the bridge over the Little Blue the place the deed was carried out stays referred to as the “haunted bridge.” Taylor, her husband and her brother are buried facet by facet within the city’s cemetery.

By the Fifties, the city was all however vacant. A handful of deteriorating buildings and different signage, nevertheless, marks the positioning — as does the bridge.