Sacramento is an unincorporated community in Phelps County, roughly six miles east southeast of Holdrege. It is a place name more than a town today, but in the late 1870s it was the busiest settlement in the county.
A state historical marker at the site records what stood there: a post office, a grocery, a dry goods and general store, a hotel, a butcher shop, a drug store, a blacksmith shop, a livery stable and a two story flour mill, most of them built of sod or hauled lumber, serving something like two hundred people. A sod schoolhouse did duty for classes and for church services, and the Phelps County Pioneer began publishing there in 1879.
The town emptied quickly. In late 1883 most of the businesses moved to Holdrege, the new town the Burlington Railroad had just reached, and some residents relocated two miles north to a second Sacramento. A post office under the name operated from 1879 to 1944, and the original school district lasted until it consolidated in 1952.
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Sacramento is a historic unincorporated community founded between 1876 and 1878 with roughly 200 residents, predating Holdrege by about five years. In its early years the settlement had a flour mill, general stores, professional services, a sod schoolhouse that doubled as a church, and its own newspaper, the Phelps County Pioneer, starting in 1879. The town went into decline in late 1883 when most of its businesses relocated to the new railroad town of Holdrege a few miles away, after the Burlington Railroad bypassed the original site. Sacramento's associated school district continued until 1952, when it consolidated into the Wilcox school district.
Sacramento, a historic unincorporated community founded in the late 1870s, predates Holdrege and was effectively its commercial ancestor.
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Road Conditions: Nebraska 511 — 511.nebraska.gov
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