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Kearney County, Nebraska

Historic newspapers, landmarks, and county history layers for genealogists and local historians.

—newspaper titles

—digitized titles

8historic places

—earliest paper

1860formed

6,688pop. 2020

13cemeteries

—CW battlefields

At a glance

Summary

The National Register of Historic Places includes 8 listed properties in the county, first listed in 1971. Most listings are in or near Minden, Axtell, Lowell.

Summary generated automatically from the source data on this page.

Newspapers

Library of Congress

Newspaper directory data for Nebraska is not yet loaded on this site. Browse Kearney titles at the Library of Congress.

National Register of Historic Places

NPS NRHP

5 of 8 listings mapped; some locations are restricted by NPS to protect sensitive sites.

8 listed properties

Property	City	Type	Listed
Bethphage Mission	Axtell	District	2013
Carpenter, Eddie Eugene and Harriet Cotton, Farmstead	Lowell	District	1993
Dobytown	Kearney	Site	1974
Fort Kearney	Newark	District	1971
Kearney County Courthouse	Minden	District	1990
Salem Swedish Methodist Episcopal Church	Axtell	Building	1982
Thorne, W. T., Building	Minden	Building	1985
US Post Office-Minden	Minden	Building	1992

Source: National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places. Property links open NRHP nomination files at the National Archives.

County formation

Newberry AHCB

Kearney was formed in 1860 (1860-01-10) from unknown / original county.

KEARNEY created by Nebraska Territory from Non-County Area 1.

Source: Newberry Library, Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

Population by decade

Census

Kearney County population from 1860 to 2020 (Census historical series).

1860	1880	1900	1920	1940	1950	1960	1980	2000	2020
474	4,072	9,866	8,583	6,854	6,409	6,580	7,053	6,882	6,688

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau historical county population (Forstall 1790–1990) and public-domain / CC0 county population series through 2020.

Cemeteries & historical places

USGS GNIS

13 cemeteries and 2 historical populated places (ghost towns / former settlements) recorded in USGS GNIS for this county.

Cemeteries — 13 of 13 listed

Name	Lat	Lon
Eaton Cemetery	40.5614	-98.80063
Free Mission Cemetery	40.40306	-98.91424
Garden Plain Cemetery	40.37932	-99.01846
Holy Family Cemetery	40.59619	-98.76075
Keene Cemetery	40.42278	-99.0748
Liberty Cemetery	40.5831	-98.90441
May Cemetery	40.46002	-98.81952
Minden Cemetery	40.49452	-98.96104
Norman Cemetery	40.47306	-98.79948
Osco Cemetery	40.37271	-98.81147
Saint Paul Cemetery	40.6556	-98.76335
White Hill Cemetery	40.56751	-98.98091
Wilcox Cemetery	40.3656	-99.15157

Historical populated places — 2 of 2

Name	Lat	Lon
Kearney City	40.64168	-99.04759
Valley City	40.64724	-98.86702

Source: USGS Geographic Names Information System (public domain). Cemeteries from the 2021 NationalFile archive; historical places from GNIS HistoricalFeatures topical extract.

Historical markers

HMdb link

Marker text and photos from the Historical Marker Database (HMdb) are not embedded here. HMdb allows non-commercial reuse with attribution, but commercial/compensated use needs written permission; this is a commercial site, so we only link out.

Search HMdb for Kearney County, Nebraska

Terms: hmdb.org/copyright.asp. Linking is encouraged by HMdb.