Stockham is a village in Hamilton County, south of Aurora. Joseph Stockham homesteaded along the Blue River in 1870, and a post office opened in his house in 1876 carrying his name. The first settlement stood in Orville precinct on the river bank. When the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad pushed a line from Fremont toward Hastings in 1887, the company bought land from Stockham and a new town was platted half a mile south. The businesses simply moved to the tracks.
The new Stockham did well for a generation. Population approached 250 by 1920, and the town carried two banks, three grain elevators, two hotels, a blacksmith shop, hardware and grocery stores, a theatre and a drug store. Three congregations formed in the late 1880s, German Lutheran, Presbyterian and Methodist Episcopal, the last of which continues as the Stockham Community Church.
The Depression closed businesses, the railroad pulled out in 1941, and the high school was discontinued in 1949. The school itself shut in 1972; the post office became a rural station of Aurora in 1968 and closed in 1976. The 2020 census counted 32 people. The masonry school building dedicated in 1922, put up after fire destroyed the earlier frame school in 1920, was described as the first of its kind in the county to include a gymnasium.
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Stockham traces to a small 1870s settlement on the Blue River named for early homesteader Joseph Stockham. When the Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad built through the area in 1887, the town relocated about half a mile southwest to sit on the new line, and "New Stockham" was platted that August. At its early-1900s peak, Stockham supported two banks, three grain elevators, two hotels, and its own newspaper. Today Stockham is Hamilton County's smallest incorporated village and shares ZIP code 68818 with Aurora, since it has no post office of its own.
Hamilton County's smallest incorporated village, named for early homesteader Joseph Stockham; relocated to the rail line in 1887.