Broken Bow Nebraska 68822

Broken Bow is a city in and the county seat of Custer County, Nebraska, sitting at the junction of Nebraska Highways 2, 21, and 92 in the heart of the state. The townsite was platted in 1882, incorporated as a village in 1884, and became a city in 1888, taking on the county seat designation in January 1883. The name comes from a broken bow and arrow found at a former Native American campsite nearby; homesteader Wilson Hewitt suggested it to the Post Office Department. The geographic center of Nebraska lies about 10 miles southwest of town, and Broken Bow is home to Adams Land and Cattle, one of the state’s largest cattle feedlots with an 85,000-head capacity. The city’s historic downtown district is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Notable residents have included homestead-era photographer Solomon D. Butcher, who lived in Broken Bow from 1915 to 1926 and whose images of sod-house pioneer life remain iconic; race car driver Earl Cooper, a Motorsports Hall of Fame inductee; U.S. Representatives Augustin Reed Humphrey and Omer M. Kem; and football player Kent McCloughan. With a population of 3,506 (2020 census), Broken Bow remains the commercial and civic hub of Custer County — Nebraska’s second-largest county by area.

Broken Bow, the Custer County seat, was platted in 1882 and named for a broken bow and arrow found at a nearby Native American campsite. It’s home to Adams Land and Cattle, one of Nebraska’s largest feedlots, and was long the residence of homestead-era photographer Solomon D. Butcher. The geographic center of Nebraska lies just southwest of town, and its historic downtown is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Adjacent Counties & Nearby Towns

Custer County is the largest county in Nebraska by area, covering 2,576 square miles of the central part of the state, with Broken Bow as its county seat. It borders Valley County and Loup County to the northeast, Sherman County and Buffalo County to the southeast, Dawson County to the south, Lincoln County to the southwest, Logan County to the west, and Blaine County to the northwest.

Broken Bow is the hub. Four state highways meet here — N-2, N-92, N-21 and N-70 — and almost every town in the county measures itself against this one. Berwyn is about 8 miles east-southeast on Highway 2 and Merna about 8 miles northwest on the same road. Weissert lies roughly 11 miles east-northeast and Westerville about 13 miles east at the US-183 crossing.

Farther out in Custer County. Buckeye is about 15 miles south-southeast and Ansley 16 miles east-southeast. Callaway sits some 17 miles west-southwest in the South Loup valley, Anselmo about 19 miles northwest up the byway, and Oconto roughly 19 miles south-southwest. Mason City is about 21 miles southeast, Sargent 22 miles northeast, Comstock 23 miles east-northeast, and Arnold about 29 miles west. The smaller places — Burr Oak, Cumro and Etna — lie south and southwest. Distances are straight-line; road mileage runs longer.

The geographic center of Nebraska is about 10 miles southwest of Broken Bow, which is as good a summary of the town’s position as any.

Points of Interest & Events

Custer County Museum, 445 South 9th Avenue — the reason many visitors come to Broken Bow at all. The museum holds the Solomon D. Butcher photographic collection. Butcher spent the 1880s and 90s hauling a camera around this county photographing homesteaders standing in front of their sod houses, and those glass plates became the defining images of the Great Plains frontier — reproduced in textbooks and documentaries ever since. They were taken here, and a great many of the families in them are still local names.

The Arrow Hotel, 509 South 9th Avenue — built in 1928 to a Prairie School design by the Omaha firm John Latenser & Sons, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 12 September 1985. It still operates on the square.

Broken Bow Commercial Square Historic District — five blocks around the public square, listed on the National Register on 21 November 2006. Broken Bow is one of relatively few Nebraska county seats built around a true courthouse square, and it is largely intact.

Other National Register listings in town — the Custer County Courthouse and Jail on Courthouse Square (listed 19 April 1979); the Broken Bow Carnegie Library, 255 South 10th Street (5 March 1998); the Security State Bank Building, 403 South 9th Street (30 November 1987); and the Stillman P. Groat House, 432 North 10th Avenue (24 March 2015).

Boneyard Creation Museum, 1709 South E Street — a privately run fossil and creation museum, (308) 390-5113.

Annual events. The Custer County Fair runs in late July and early August. Crazy Days and the D.C. Lynch Carnival both fall in July. Market on the Square is held Thursdays from May through September. Broken Bow is a stop on the Junk Jaunt, the 300-mile central Nebraska garage-sale route held the last full weekend of September, and the Festival of Lights follows Thanksgiving.

Education & Health

Schools. Broken Bow Public Schools serve the city and a large surrounding area. North Park Elementary takes kindergarten through fifth grade; Broken Bow Middle School and High School take sixth through twelfth, with the high school at 323 North 7th Avenue. Teams compete as the Indians, in red and white. It is the largest district in Custer County, one of six — the others being Ansley, Anselmo-Merna, Arnold, Callaway and Sargent.

Health care. Jennie M. Melham Memorial Medical Center, 145 Memorial Drive, (308) 872-4100, is the hospital for the whole of Custer County — a 23-bed critical access hospital with a 24-hour emergency room. For towns at the western edge of the county, Callaway District Hospital is the nearer option, and it runs a satellite clinic in Arnold. Anything requiring a larger facility goes to Kearney, Grand Island or North Platte.

Highway Access

Broken Bow is a genuine highway junction — four state routes meet here, and two of them begin or end at this point.

Nebraska Highway 2, the Sandhills Journey National Scenic Byway, is the main line. Northwest it runs through Merna and Anselmo and on into the Sandhills past Dunning, Halsey, Thedford and Mullen to Alliance — 272 miles of byway end to end. Southeast it passes Berwyn, Ansley and Mason City toward Ravenna, Cairo and Grand Island.

Nebraska Highway 92 runs together with N-2 from Merna through Broken Bow as far as Ansley, where it splits away east toward Loup City and St. Paul. West of Merna it heads for Arnold and Stapleton. N-92 is the only Nebraska highway that crosses the entire state west to east.

Nebraska Highway 21 has its northern terminus here. Southbound it runs through Oconto to Lexington and Cozad on Interstate 80, then south to end near Eustis. This is the road to I-80 — about 55 miles to Lexington.

Nebraska Highway 70 has its western terminus just east of town at N-2/N-92. It runs east past Westerville to Arcadia, Ord, Ericson and Bartlett, ending at Elgin.