Tilden Nebraska

City · Antelope County · Population 992 (2020 census) · ZIP 68781 · Founded 1880 · Peak population 1,106 (1930)

About Tilden

Tilden is a city of 992 people (2020) on the line between Antelope County and Madison County; about two-thirds of the city lies in Madison County. It sits at about 1,683 feet in the Elkhorn valley on US 275, where NE 45 ends, about 21 miles west of Norfolk. The Cowboy Trail runs through town on the old railroad grade, with a spur trail. Tilden has Elkhorn Valley Schools (PK–12 on one campus), the Raymond A. Whitwer Tilden Public Library with its Lied Auditorium, an AMH clinic, a 1935 WPA swimming pool, four parks and the weekly Tilden Citizen and Meadow Grove News. Tilden is on Central Time.

History

The railroad laid out the town in 1880, and the first store opened that March. It was called Burnett, for the first superintendent of the Sioux City & Pacific, the Chicago & North Western affiliate that built the line up the Elkhorn valley in 1879–80. Burnett incorporated in 1885, and A. E. Sheldon, later a noted Nebraska historian, started the Burnett Blade there in 1884. In 1887 the Post Office renamed it Tilden, for Samuel J. Tilden, the 1876 Democratic presidential candidate, to avoid confusion with Bennet; locals kept using Burnett for years. Tilden became a city of the second class in 1919 and reached 1,106 people in 1930. Tilden Community Hospital closed on July 1, 2014. The railroad was abandoned in 1992 and became the Cowboy Trail. L. Ron Hubbard was born in Tilden on March 13, 1911; Hall of Fame center fielder Richie Ashburn (born 1927) and theologian Walter Brueggemann (born 1933) are also natives.

Things to see

the Cowboy Trail and its spur trail · the Richie Ashburn ball field and Horseshoe Bend Park · the 1935 WPA pool · Prairie Days, the last weekend of July