Wood River is a city in southwestern Hall County with 1,172 residents at the 2020 census. It lies on U.S. Route 30 about fourteen miles southwest of Grand Island and twenty-five miles northeast of Kearney, just south of the Wood River and roughly three and a half miles north of the Platte. It is part of the Grand Island metropolitan area.
The first residents kept road ranches serving overland travelers in the Platte valley between 1858 and 1860, among them the Moore brothers, James Jackson and Joseph E. Johnson. A Union Pacific station in 1866 drew a town around it, and by 1869 there was a log Catholic church and a school. When the railroad platted a new site three miles east in 1874 and 1875, the town simply followed: the station, the post office and the store were put on skids and hauled to the new location. Little was left at the first site but St. Mary’s Cemetery and a school building.
The country around town is Platte valley bottomland, and visitors come for the Crane Trust Nature and Visitor Center and for Cheyenne State Recreation Area, which offers boating, camping and fishing. The city has a nine hole municipal golf course, a campground, an aquatic center and a library, and it runs a Celebrate Wood River performing arts series at the high school theater through the school year. Scott Frost, the football coach, grew up here.
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Wood River takes its name from the tree-lined Wood River, a Platte tributary just north of town. The area served westbound emigrant traffic from around 1858, and the Union Pacific Railroad established a station in 1866 that prompted the original townsite to be platted there. In 1874-1875, the Union Pacific relocated its station about three miles east, and the town — including its post office and businesses — moved with it to its present site; only St. Mary's Cemetery and the District 5 School remain at the original 1866 townsite. Sitting on U.S. Route 30 about 3.5 miles north of the Platte River, Wood River is part of the Grand Island metropolitan area, roughly 14.5 miles southwest of Grand Island and 25.5 miles northeast of Kearney.
A Grand Island-area town named for the tree-lined Platte tributary running past it, relocated about three miles in 1874-1875 to follow the Union Pacific's new station.