Meridian Nebraska - Nebraska Directory

Meridian Area Cameras

Former town · Jefferson County · post office 1865–1883; platted 1868

About Meridian

Meridian was a town in western Jefferson County, on the Little Blue River just east of the Sixth Principal Meridian and the Thayer County line, about 4 miles west of Powell. Nothing of it stands today, but the name lives on in Meridian Township and Meridian Public Schools; the District No. 10 School museum is less than a mile away.

History

Settlement began in 1865 around George Weisel's sawmill, later a gristmill, on the Little Blue, and a post office named Big Sandy opened that year. The town was surveyed and platted in the fall of 1868, the first in the county, and named for the Sixth Principal Meridian; the post office took the name Meridian in 1870. Scott Lewis ran the county's first drugstore here from 1868 to 1871 before moving it to Fairbury, and the first District No. 10 school stood in the townsite.

Meridian had about 150 people in 1872, when the St. Joseph & Western Railroad passed about 2 miles to the north, and the town declined. Its mill was still grinding in 1882, but the post office closed in 1883, and the school moved to its present site in 1890.

Nearby towns

Powell	about 4.2 mi east	County roads
Alexandria	about 2.6 mi north-northwest	County roads
Gladstone	about 4.9 mi southeast	County roads
Daykin	about 8 mi north-northeast	County roads
Fairbury	about 11 mi east-southeast	County roads and US 136