Dakota Junction Nebraska - Nebraska Directory

Dakota Junction Area Cameras

Railroad junction and former townsite · Dawes County · O'Linn townsite 1884–1885

About Dakota Junction

Dakota Junction is a railroad junction on the White River about 6 miles northwest of Chadron in Dawes County, where the old Chicago & North Western line north into South Dakota leaves the line west to Whitney and Crawford. The Nebraska Northwestern Railroad, based in Chadron, owns the 7 miles of track from Chadron to the junction. A grain elevator was built just east of it in 2014. The junction is on railroad property; there is no town and no public access to the tracks.

History

In 1884 Fannie O'Linn founded a town called O'Linn, also known as Dakota or Shadrone, near where Chadron Creek meets the White River, expecting the railroad to come that way; it had about 500 people within a year. When the Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad laid out its townsite on Bordeaux Creek about 6 miles southeast in 1885, the settlers moved their buildings there, and the new town became Chadron. The railroad, later the Chicago & North Western, went on west to Crawford and north toward the Black Hills, and the place where the two lines part became Dakota Junction. The North Western's Dakota line later passed to the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern and is now the Rapid City, Pierre & Eastern.