Scottsbluff Nebraska

City · Scotts Bluff County · Population 14,436 (2020 census) · ZIP 69361 · Founded 1899 · Peak population 15,039 (2010)

About Scottsbluff

Scottsbluff is a city of 14,436 (2020), the largest in Scotts Bluff County and in the Nebraska Panhandle, on the north bank of the North Platte River at 3,888 feet. Gering, the county seat, and Terrytown lie across the river, and Scotts Bluff National Monument rises about 3½ miles southwest. US 26, NE 71 and NE 92 run together through the north side of town, and the Western Nebraska Regional Airport is 3 miles east. Scottsbluff is the regional center for health care, shopping and education, home to Regional West Medical Center and Western Nebraska Community College, and is on Mountain Time.

History

The Lincoln Land Company, the Burlington railroad's townsite arm, platted Scottsbluff on February 5, 1899, and the Burlington laid track up the north side of the valley the next year. As the first town in the valley on a railroad, it drew businesses across the river from Gering, and it was incorporated in 1900. The name comes from the bluff, which was named for Hiram Scott, a fur trapper who died near it in 1828.

Irrigation made the town. Private canals were followed by the federal North Platte Project, authorized in 1903, whose Interstate and Fort Laramie canals and reservoirs at Lake Alice, Lake Minatare and Winters Creek water about 335,000 acres. In 1910 Great Western Sugar opened its factory east of town, and sugar beets and the Volga German and Mexican American families who worked them shaped the city; the Western Sugar Cooperative still runs the plant on East Overland. Scottsbluff Junior College opened in 1926 (today WNCC, celebrating its centennial), the hospital that became Regional West opened in 1924, and in World War II the airport trained B-17 and B-24 crews. The population reached its high, 15,039, in 2010. Randy Meisner, founding bassist of the Eagles, grew up here.

Things to see

the Riverside Discovery Center, 1600 S. Beltline Hwy. W., a zoo opened in 1950 with more than 150 animals · the West Nebraska Arts Center, 106 E. 18th St., in the 1922 Carnegie library (National Register), with free gallery shows · the Midwest Theater, 1707 Broadway, and the National Register buildings of downtown Broadway, among them the Lincoln Hotel and the Marquis Opera House · Riverside Park and the Monument Valley Pathway along the river, with bilingual markers on the settlement of the valley, and the Riverside Park Campground · the Lied Scottsbluff Public Library, 1809 3rd Ave. · the Westmoor Pool, 1936 Ave. I, and the Scotts Bluff Country Club, 5014 Ave. I · the North Platte National Wildlife Refuge at Lake Alice, about 8 mi northeast · Scotts Bluff National Monument, about 3½ mi southwest across the river