St. Deroin Nebraska

Former town · Nemaha County · laid out 1853–54; post office 1861–1910

About St. Deroin

St. Deroin is a former Missouri River town in southeastern Nemaha County, now on the northern edge of Indian Cave State Park, about 2.5 miles northeast of Barada and 8 miles southeast of Nemaha. Game and Parks has restored its schoolhouse and rebuilt a general store, a trading post and a log cabin, and volunteers hold living-history weekends in summer and fall.

History

St. Deroin was laid out in 1853–54 by Robert Hawke, Joseph Deroin and others as a trading post for the Nemaha Half-Breed Reservation, created by an 1830 treaty for families of mixed Native and European descent; Andreas called it the county's first town site. Joseph Deroin, the son of a French-Canadian trader and an Otoe mother, was killed in 1858 in a quarrel over a small debt. A store opened in 1859, the post office in 1861, and a brick schoolhouse and flour mill in 1868; a ferry crossed the Missouri for about thirty years, and the town had about 275 people in 1870.

The railroads passed St. Deroin by. A flood in 1911 damaged the town, the school was rebuilt on the bluff in 1912, the ferry moved to Brownville in 1915, and the post office had closed in 1910; by the 1920s only the school and cemetery were left. The school closed in 1944. The state began buying land for Indian Cave State Park in 1962, and Game and Parks restored the school in 1978.

Things to see

Indian Cave State Park: petroglyphs viewed from a boardwalk, 22 miles of hiking and biking trails, 16 miles of horse trails, camping and a boat ramp (park permit required) · the restored St. Deroin School (1912 building) and reconstructed store and cabin · St. Deroin Cemetery, first burials 1866 · Haunted Hollow at the park in October