Pierce Nebraska

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City · Pierce County · County seat · Population 1,845 (2020 census) · ZIP 68767 · Founded 1871

About Pierce

Pierce is a city of 1,845 people (2020), the most it has counted, and the seat of Pierce County, at 1,585 feet where Willow Creek joins the North Fork of the Elkhorn River. NE 13 runs through town from Hadar toward Plainview, and NE 98 starts here and heads east to US 81 and Wayne County. Norfolk is about 13 miles south-southeast. The town has the county courthouse, Pierce Public Schools, the Lied Pierce Public Library and a family-medicine clinic, and Willow Creek State Recreation Area lies just southwest, linked to town by a 2-mile trail. Pierce is on Central Time.

History

In 1870 J. H. Brown and R. S. Lucas began the Willow Creek settlement here; Brown’s slab-and-sod house served as home, post office, courthouse and hotel. At the election that organized the county on July 26, 1870, Pierce was chosen county seat, and it has never moved. The town, named like the county for President Franklin Pierce, was platted on May 4, 1871, in 56 blocks, with streets named for landowners such as Brown, Lucas and Gibson. A frame courthouse costing $4,000 went up in 1871–72 and a $25,000 brick one, a block north, in 1889–90; the present courthouse at 111 W. Court St. replaced it in the 1970s. The railroad from Norfolk to Creighton came through in 1880, the year the Pierce Milling Company was built on the Willow Creek dam of 1878; the mill shipped flour as far as Glasgow, Scotland, burned in 1908 and was rebuilt in 1913. Pierce was incorporated as a village on May 24, 1883. In September 2013 the Lambrecht Chevrolet auction drew buyers from around the world for some 500 cars and trucks, many never sold, that had sat at the closed dealership for decades.

Things to see

Gilman Park, about 50 acres on the northeast side of town, on the site of the 1878 mill dam (washed out in 1924, rebuilt in 1936): the Bill Cox Memorial Lake (1970), the 14-acre Gilman Park Arboretum (1993) with a 1.2-mile path, the city pool and a four-site campground ($10 a day, May to October) · the Pierce Historical Society Museum in Gilman Park on N. Mill St.: the Pierce depot, a blacksmith shop, the District 7 schoolhouse and a caboose; Sundays 1:30 to 4:30, Memorial Day to Labor Day, free · Willow Creek State Recreation Area: a 700-acre lake, 165 electric campsites, an equestrian camp and an 8-mile limestone trail · the Pierce County Veterans Memorial on the courthouse grounds · the Meridian Highway historic segment, 4½ miles of the 1911 road (now county roads) with a 1915 truss bridge, on the National Register; the marker is at NE 13 and 552nd Avenue, about 4 miles southeast · Pierce Golf Course, 9 holes and a driving range about a mile northwest of town · the Pierce County Fair in late July (July 22–26 in 2026) and the Pierce Old Time Threshers Bee at the fairgrounds each September