Anselmo is a village in Custer County, Nebraska, platted in 1886 when the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad was extended to the site, and situated along Nebraska Highway 2 at its junction with Spur 21A. The town takes its name from Anselmo B. Smith, a civil engineer who platted railroad towns across the region for the Lincoln Town-Site Company. Like many Custer County communities, Anselmo has seen its population decline steadily from its early twentieth-century peak — the 2020 census counted 108 residents, down from 159 in 2000 and 145 in 2010. Despite its small size, the village's most notable native son had an outsized impact on the modern world: Jay Wright Forrester, born in Anselmo, became a pioneering computer engineer who invented magnetic-core memory — the dominant form of computer memory for two decades — and later founded the field of system dynamics at MIT. Politician Sandra Kauffman is another notable figure with ties to the community. Anselmo remains a quiet farming town along the Sandhills Journey corridor of central Nebraska.

Adjacent Counties

Custer County borders Valley County (northeast), Loup County (northeast), Sherman County (southeast), Buffalo County (southeast), Dawson County (south), Lincoln County (southwest), Logan County (west), and Blaine County (northwest).

Nearby Towns

Merna (about 11 miles southeast via NE-2) · Broken Bow (Custer County’s seat, about 20 miles southeast via NE-2)

Points of Interest & Events

St. Anselm’s Catholic Church, Rectory and Parish Hall — known locally as “the Cathedral of the Sandhills,” and the reason many people come to Anselmo at all. The church and rectory were built in 1928–29 in Late Gothic Revival style, with the parish hall — the original church of 1905 — standing alongside in a Bungalow-Craftsman manner. The group was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 12 March 2008. There is a historical marker at 1000 West Rolla Avenue. A church of this ambition in a village of a hundred people is worth the detour.

Victoria Springs State Recreation Area — six miles east of Anselmo at 43400 Highway S21A. Sixty acres around a five-acre spring-fed lake, and one of the oldest state parks in Nebraska.

Inside the park stand two log cabins built in 1874 by Judge Charles R. Mathews — one was his home, and the other was the first post office in Custer County. An 1888–89 schoolhouse from Custer County School District No. 2 has also been moved there. For anyone tracing the county’s origins, this is where they are.

Camping and lodging at Victoria Springs — 27 electrical camping pads, two modern two-bedroom cabins, a two-mile nature trail, and paddleboat rental in summer. It is the best-equipped campground in this part of Custer County and a natural overnight stop on the Sandhills Journey byway.

Annual events. The Big Sky Jubilee is held in June.

Education & Health

Schools. Anselmo is served by Anselmo-Merna Public Schools, whose teams are the Coyotes. Both school buildings — the elementary for pre-kindergarten through sixth grade and the high school for seventh through twelfth — are at 750 North Conway Street in Merna, about 11 miles south-south-east. The district office is reachable on (308) 643-2224.

Health care. There is no clinic in Anselmo. The nearest hospital is Jennie M. Melham Memorial Medical Center, 145 Memorial Drive, Broken Bow, (308) 872-4100, about 19 miles south-east — a 23-bed critical access hospital with a 24-hour emergency room.

Highway Access

Nebraska Highway 2 runs through Anselmo, and this is the stretch where the character of the drive changes: east of here is farm country, west of here the Sandhills proper begin. The road is the Sandhills Journey National Scenic Byway, 272 miles from Grand Island to Alliance.

South-east, N-2 reaches Merna in about 11 miles — where Highway 92 joins — then Broken Bow at about 19 miles, and on through Berwyn and Ansley toward Ravenna and Grand Island.

North-west, N-2 runs to Dunning, about 19 miles, where N-91 crosses, then Halsey, Thedford, Mullen and Hyannis, finishing at Alliance. This is the emptiest and, to many drivers, the finest part of the byway.

Spur S21A leads east from N-2 to Victoria Springs State Recreation Area.

Reaching the Interstate. South-east to Broken Bow, then south on N-21 through Oconto to Lexington — about 74 miles to I-80.