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Town Overview
Firth is the southernmost community in Lancaster County, a village of 649 on 0.28 square miles about 20 miles south-southeast of Lincoln. Unlike most villages its size it has grown, if slowly: 564 residents in 2000, 590 in 2010, 649 in 2020.
Settlement began in the early 1870s as the Atchison & Nebraska Railroad pushed toward Lincoln. The post office was established in 1872 and named for Frank Firth, a superintendent of that railroad; the village incorporated in 1879. Once the line was finished Firth became a serious shipping point — local accounts record 700 carloads of grain and livestock a day moving through at its peak.
A brick school building went up in 1916 and stood until 1971, seven years after Firth consolidated into the Norris district. Orah Dee Clark, the first superintendent of schools in Alaska, was born here.
Adjacent Counties & Nearby Towns
Lancaster County is Nebraska's second most populous county, with 322,608 residents in 2020 across 846 square miles, and its seat is Lincoln, the state capital. It borders Saunders County to the north, Cass County to the northeast, Otoe County and Johnson County to the southeast, Gage County to the south, Saline County to the southwest, and Seward County and Butler County to the northwest.
Nearest towns. Hickman is about 6 miles north-northwest and Panama about 7 miles northeast. Roca lies about 10 miles north-northwest and Hallam about 10 miles west. Cortland, also in the Norris school district, is just south over the Gage County line. Downtown Lincoln is about 20 miles north-northwest. Distances given here are straight-line measurements.
Points of Interest & Events
Being the county's southernmost village puts Firth on the edge of the Lincoln metro and at the top of the Big Blue country that runs south into Gage County. The village borders the Big Nemaha Reservoir to its east.
Railroad heritage. Firth exists because of the Atchison & Nebraska Railroad, and at its height was shipping several hundred carloads of grain and livestock a day — a scale of activity that is hard to picture in a village of 649 today.
Events. No recurring town-wide celebration could be independently verified for Firth at the time of writing, so none is claimed here.
Education & Health
Schools. Firth consolidated with its neighbours in 1964 to form what is now Norris School District 160. The Norris campus sits roughly two miles north and one mile west of the village. Norris School District 160, founded in 1964 and named for Senator George W. Norris, serves nine small communities across Lancaster, Gage and Otoe counties — Roca, Hickman, Firth, Cortland, Panama, Princeton, Holland, Cheney and Rokeby — from a single 160-acre campus about 12 miles south of Lincoln, surrounded by the Norris Forest School Arboretum. Four buildings (elementary, intermediate, middle and high school) hold just under 2,000 students. The campus was badly damaged by the May 2004 Hallam tornado and took more than 20 months and over $35 million to rebuild.
Health care. There is no hospital in Firth; the Lakeview Rest Home was built in the village in the 1970s on donated land. Lincoln, about 20 miles north-northwest, has the region's full range of hospital care, and Beatrice in Gage County is a similar distance south.
Highway Access
Firth sits on the county road network south of Lincoln, reached most directly by way of U.S. Route 77, which runs south from the city toward Beatrice a few miles west of the village.
The nearest state highway junction of note is at Roca, about 10 miles north-northwest, where Nebraska Highway 33 ends at U.S. Route 77. The nearest interstate is Interstate 80 on the far side of Lincoln. The Atchison & Nebraska line that built the village still runs through it, freight only.
Firth is the southernmost community in Lancaster County, a village of 649 about 20 miles south-southeast of Lincoln. It grew up in the early 1870s along the Atchison & Nebraska Railroad, took its name from the line's superintendent Frank Firth when the post office opened in 1872, and incorporated in 1879. At its peak it shipped hundreds of carloads of grain and livestock a day. It consolidated into what is now Norris School District 160 in 1964.
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