About Naponee
Naponee is a village in Franklin County, Nebraska. It sits on Turkey Creek in the Republican River valley, about three miles downstream from Harlan County Dam and roughly two miles south of U.S. Route 136. The village covers about 0.23 square miles. The 2020 census counted 83 residents, down from 106 in 2010 and 132 in 2000.
History
The first settlers reached the area in 1869. A post office followed in 1871. A flouring mill was built in 1874 and the first store opened in 1877. The Burlington and Missouri River Railroad arrived at the end of the 1870s and put up a depot. The railroad laid out a separate townsite called Perth nearby and tried, without success, to move the town to it. Perth and Naponee were incorporated as a single village in 1909.
The name
The name comes from Napanee, Ontario, the home town of a Canadian who fought in the Civil War and afterward bought land along the Republican River.
Later years
The 1930s brought dust storms and a flood on the Republican River in 1935. Construction of Harlan County Dam in the 1940s roughly doubled the village population, from about 200 to about 400. Naponee is listed as the home town of the actor David Janssen.
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Naponee is a village along the Republican River in southern Franklin County, first settled in 1869. A Canadian Civil War veteran purchased land here and named the settlement after his hometown of Napanee, Ontario, with the spelling gradually shifting to Naponee. A post office was established in 1871, the first store opened in 1877, and the village was formally surveyed in 1879, the same year the Burlington Railroad reached town; Naponee was formally incorporated in 1909. The Depression years brought hardship, including the 1935 dust storms and Republican River flooding, but construction of the Harlan County Dam a few miles upstream in the 1940s nearly doubled the town's population during the building boom. Naponee is the hometown of actor David Janssen, star of the television series The Fugitive. With a 2020 population of 83, the village today sits just a few miles downstream of Harlan County Lake, a regional recreation destination.
Naponee's name is one of the more distinctive in Franklin County, tracing directly back to a Canadian hometown carried west by an early settler. Its proximity to Harlan County Lake gives the small, declining village a modest ongoing connection to regional recreation.