Scotia is a village in Greeley County, above the North Loup River valley on Nebraska Highway 22. Samuel Scott, who thought the valley looked like Scotland, supplied the name — Scotia is a literary name for Scotland — and later gave the town site to the county. Scotia was the first county seat of Greeley County, from 1874 until the railroad built through the middle of the county and Greeley Center took over; a disputed 1890 election over the move is still talked about locally. The 2020 census counted 301 residents.
Chalk is the local material and the local story. Jack Swearengen, a trapper and scout, lived in the white chalk bluffs above the valley from 1872, which is how Happy Jack Peak got its name. Ed Wright began mining the deposit in 1877, and in 1887 he finished a general store in Scotia built of chalk rock quarried from those bluffs. That building, the Scotia Chalk Building, is on the National Register of Historic Places. An Omaha paint company reopened the mine in the 1930s, and the chalk went into paint, whitewash, cement, polishes and chicken feed.
The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission bought the mine area in 1967 as a wayside park. The mine is open for tours from Memorial Day through Labor Day, with more than six thousand feet of room and pillar workings underground — described as the only publicly accessible mine of its kind in North America — and a long view over the valley from the top. Frank Phillips, a founder of Phillips Petroleum, came from Scotia.
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Scotia was Greeley County's original county seat, holding that designation from 1874 until losing it to Greeley in 1890. The village is named for a Scottish settler's poetic name for Scotland. Scotia is home to the National Register-listed 1887 Scotia Chalk Building, built from chalk blocks quarried from a nearby bluff on the North Loup River, once part of a local chalk-mining and processing operation.
Greeley County's original county seat, home to the National Register-listed 1887 Scotia Chalk Building.