About Edgar
Edgar is a city in Clay County, in south central Nebraska. It covers about 0.79 square miles. The 2020 census counted 428 residents, which makes it one of the larger communities in the county. The ZIP code is 68935. Fairfield lies about eight miles north-west and Davenport about nine miles south-east.
History
Henry and Sarah Gipe filed a homestead claim in March 1872 and built the first house where the railroad tracks crossed their land. The first post office opened in 1872, and the town was platted in 1873 when the railroad was extended to that point. The St Joseph and Denver City Railroad first called the place Eden. Accounts of how the present name was settled on do not agree with each other.
A railroad town
A second line, the Burlington and Missouri, arrived in 1886 and made Edgar a layover point for train crews. That is how the town earned its reputation as a railroad town. Edgar reached its largest recorded population, about 1,100, in 1890 and held near 1,000 until the 1930s. The opera house, built in 1899, still stands. So does the 1873 schoolhouse, though it is no longer in use.
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Edgar is a city in southern Clay County, platted in 1873 along the railroad and named for the son of an early pioneer settler.
The specific pioneer honored by the name has been lost to history, but the naming story itself is documented in Nebraska's standard place-name references.