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History of Butte, Nebraska

History of Butte, Nebraska

Butte has been the seat of Boyd County since the county was organised, and for a town of under three hundred people it has produced a startling amount of history — a professional wrestler who changed American television, a future state governor in its high-school yearbook, and a fifteen-year fight over a nuclear waste dump that ended in the county’s favour. Sources for this page include Perkey’s Nebraska Place Names and the Lynch Centennial book, “Lynch, Nebraska 1892 to 1992.”

Contents

A County Late to Nebraska

Boyd County came to Nebraska late, and the reason is a line on a map. As the Lynch Centennial book explains it, when Dakota Territory was set off in 1861 the northern boundary of Nebraska did not run straight east to the Missouri. Instead, on reaching the Keya Paha River, it turned south and followed that stream down to the Niobrara, and the Niobrara to its mouth. Everything north of that line — all of what is now Boyd County, and Raymond Township in Knox — lay in Dakota Territory, not Nebraska.

Even after the line was straightened, “the Sioux retained title to the land and settlement was prohibited.” The transfer to Nebraska took effect in 1882, and the county was formally organised on 1 August 1891 — named for James E. Boyd, who was governor of Nebraska that year. The book puts the delay in perspective: “Compared to the rest of the state Boyd County was late in getting settled up; Holt County having been created in 1862 and Knox County clear back in 1856.”

The first years were rough in a specific way. “For two years we had no courts of any kind in the county so it was for every man to mind his own business and take care of himself.”

The Twin Buttes

Perkey’s is unambiguous: the town was “named for the Twin Buttes located 8 miles west of Butte.” In a county of rolling grass above the Niobrara breaks, two isolated hills were landmark enough to name a county seat after.

Perkey’s gives Butte a peak population of 623, in 1940, and dates the post office to 13 July 1914. That post-office date is worth a flag: it is twenty-two years after Butte was already functioning as the county seat — the Lynch book records a townsite petition filed “with the County Judge at Butte” on 29 March 1892, and church incorporations recorded with the Boyd County Clerk at Butte in 1898 and 1899. Most likely the 1914 date marks a re-establishment or a change of office rather than the first mail service here. It should not be read as the town’s founding date.

The County Seat

Butte has held the county offices from the beginning, and the Lynch book — written from the point of view of a rival town — simply treats this as a fact of life. The Government Patent for the Lynch townsite was recorded “in the county seat at Butte” in 1900; the Boyd County Clerk, E. G. Barnum, took the church filings in 1899.

Curiously, the book never says how the county was named or who won the county-seat fight — the two questions a reader most wants answered. Butte simply appears, already installed. Among the county officers it does name: B. L. Chambers, first Treasurer of Boyd County, December 1891; J. C. Hoffman, one of the first commissioners; Emma S. Warner, County Superintendent in January 1892; John A. Lynch, elected Sheriff in 1892; County Agent Willis Thurber at Butte in 1935, with Home Extension Agent Miss Florence Emmett; and County Attorney W. L. Brennen of Butte in 1945.

The Town That Never Was

One of the odder episodes in the county’s history belongs to Butte. Az Perry of Butte drove a series of railroad schemes before 1902, and on the strength of them a townsite called Perry was platted on the north bank of the Niobrara, south of Butte. The Lynch book records that “by 1900 a large number of people and buildings were already there.”

The railroad went elsewhere. Perry is not on the map today.

Butte was in on a second paper railroad too — the Niobrara Electric Light and Power Railroad of 1914, a standard-gauge line that was to run from the C&NW at Anoka to Butte and then south-east toward the Niobrara. It was never built either.

Gorgeous George

George Raymond Wagner was born in Butte on 24 March 1915, and grew up to become the most famous professional wrestler in America and one of the most consequential performers in the early history of television.

The family did not stay long — they farmed for a time near Phoenix in Holt County before moving on to Iowa and then to Houston when George was seven. But the birth certificate says Butte.

As “Gorgeous George,” the Human Orchid, Wagner invented an act that had never been seen: platinum-blond marcelled hair held with gold bobby pins, sequined robes, a valet spraying perfume into the ring, and an entrance walked to Pomp and Circumstance. His stated philosophy was “Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat!” His television debut on 11 November 1947 has been ranked among the hundred most significant televised acts of the twentieth century; in the late 1940s people bought television sets to watch him.

His influence ran well past wrestling. Muhammad Ali — then Cassius Clay — heard Wagner boasting on a Las Vegas radio show that he was the greatest wrestler in the world, and took the lesson straight into his own build-up against Sonny Liston. James Brown said plainly that he had borrowed “many of Gorgeous George’s antics” for his own stage act. Wagner died on 26 December 1963, aged 48.

The Class of 1982

Tim Walz graduated from Butte High School in 1982, in a class of twenty-five. He was born at West Point in 1964 and grew up mainly in Valentine; the family moved to Butte during his high-school years, to be nearer his mother’s relatives after his father was diagnosed with lung cancer. His father, James Frederick Walz, was a teacher and school superintendent and a Korean War veteran, and died in January 1984.

Walz left Nebraska after graduating, returned to attend Chadron State College in 1987, and moved to Minnesota in 1996. He was elected Governor of Minnesota in 2018 and was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2024.

The Waste Dump Fight

For most of the 1990s, Boyd County was the place where the Midwest intended to bury its radioactive waste, and Butte was at the centre of it.

Under the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact, land west of Butte was selected and purchased as the disposal site for five states. The Lynch book, writing in 1992 while the fight was live, records the money side of it without comment: a 1989 grant agreement among the towns of Lynch, Monowi and Butte. What followed was more than a decade of hearings, licensing battles and litigation, in a county of fewer than 2,500 people.

The dump was never built. The licence was denied, the compact sued, and Nebraska was removed from the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact in 2004. It remains the defining civic episode in the recent history of Boyd County, and it was fought and won locally.

Schools and Rivals

Butte High School was Lynch’s chief rival for as long as both had teams. The first night football game ever played at Lynch, on 30 September 1955, was against Butte; the 1950 conference title was shared between them; and the last homecoming recorded in the Centennial book, in 1991, “was with Butte. Butte winning over Lynch by a score of 44-14.”

Then the arithmetic of a shrinking county caught up with the rivalry. In 1991–92 Lynch and Butte began sharing a superintendent, Mr. Bernard Straatmeyer, with Butte Public School District #5. Butte later merged into West Boyd Schools in July 2007, and West Boyd in turn became part of Boyd County Public Schools in June 2017.

The town also carried the county’s medical and elder care for years — Dr. James Goodner and later Dr. Dale Block ran clinics at Butte tied to Lynch, and the Butte Nursing Home took residents from across Boyd County. The Boyd County Fair was held at Butte and at Spencer.

Butte’s population was 366 in 2000, 326 in 2010 and 286 in 2020 — less than half its 1940 peak, but still the county seat, and still the place where the courthouse stands.

Further reading: the history of Lynch, Monowi, Spencer, and Boyd County.