Nebraska City High School - Pioneer Yearbook (Nebraska City, NE)

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This year the Court House lawn is lighted with the one-hundred candles shining to celebrate our 100 years of Progress. Our city started in 1854 with only one candle. Each year as our city grew a new candle was added. These are significant of the foresight of the early Pioneers and their hard work as well as co-operation to fulfill their dreams of a growing community. A community that we can all l e proud to lie a part of. This past century we have grown from a tiny scattered village protected only by the Block House shown above into a thriving modern town. Today we are result of the hope and vision of our forefathers. We have survived the early hardships: the drouth, the fire, depression; and faced the new century with a grim determination to carry forward in the same stern pattern set by those who blazed the trail one-hundred years ago. With this Centennial Celebration begins a new era, a new century. Each day in this new century brings an opportunity for progress and advancement. We are proud of our “firsts.” A number of churches were organized, the Methodist being first in the state. Our own High School has the distinction of being the first west of the Missouri. Our Courthouse is the oldest building in use in the state. The first newspaper moved from Bellevue to Nebraska City passed the Century mark last November.

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Pioneer Volume VII MCMLIV Nebraska City, Nebraska Table of Contents One Hundred Years................. 1-7 Faculty.......................... 8-15 Classes .........................16-39 Organization ....................40-61 Athletics........................62-73 Activities ......................76-85 Advertising .....................86-96 Centennial Staff Editor Harvey Hutton Business Manager. . . . Dolores Lundy .Make Up Editor Artist . Mike Gilligan Photographer . . . Bill Phillips Adviser Florence Barta

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Education was important to early Nebraskans. The first school in the whole wide expanse of the territory and state of Nebraska was opened and taught by Miss Margaret Martin. Her picture was loaned to us for the reproduction shown here. Miss Martin began her school after some preliminary preparations in a log house which stood at Tenth and First Avenue of the present city in 1855. It was a success from the start because a large number of new-comers brought their children with them and yearned for formal training of their minds. In 1844 a military post was constructed here known as Fort Kearney, the outpost from which it was intended to guard the passage of people passing through to the Far West, particularly Oregon. A blockhouse was at once erected near what is now Fifth and Central Avenue. A hospital was constructed, barracks for the troops and a long house for officers quarters. The fort was active for only a short time. The war wiih Mexico loomed and the troops were moved to a post in New Mexico. Some time later “new” Fort Kearney was established in central Nebraska. Today the hill where first settlers built is called Kearney Hill. A few of these early buildings show'll in picture still stand. Before 1844, the area known as Otoe county Nebraska, was in the exclusive possession of the Pawnees, Otoes, Omahas, and a few other tribes of Indians. However, traders, who followed the exploration of Lewis and Clark in 1804, were here now and then, going up and down the Missouri River which is at our front door, ascending from St. Louis, the great trading post of the West, and using the river as far as they could go. It is certain that no regular settlement before 1844 had been made in Nebraska l e-low Bellevue, some 30 miles north of us, then a station of American Fur Company, and under the management of the intrepid settler “Peter A. Sarpy,” whose name and fame were commemorated in September, 1852 under the auspices of the World Life Insurance Company. Early explorers made no mention of fertile land. About 1857 occured what were practically the first attempts at agriculture. Up to this time the thought of attempts to cultivate the soil had not been favorable or generally entertained. Moreover there were legends to the effect that this time, in the words of Hon. J. Sterling Morton, it was discovered that a man with some mind and muscle could deposit eight quarts of Indian corn in a well plowed acre of Otoe county land, and by reasonable careful cultivation, and the co-operation of sunbeams and raindrops, gather in the autumn anywhere from fifty to eighty bushels of the cereal, from the same acre and have all the land left.