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Elwood is the county seat of Gosper County, with a population of about 622 residents as of recent estimates (654 in the 2020 Census). It was platted in 1885 when the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad reached the site, and local tradition holds it was named for Elwood Thomas, a young homesteader who offered his own name when no one else could settle on one.
Elwood won a bitterly contested county-seat election in 1888, prevailing over the earlier seat at Homerville after Homerville’s own railroad hopes fell through; local lore holds that Elwood partisans moved the county records overnight while a group of “Minutemen of Homerville” stood guard pending the courts. The Gosper County Courthouse, an Art Deco building completed in 1938–39, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Elwood was also the birthplace of John Leland Champe (1895–1978), a noted University of Nebraska archaeologist known for his excavations at Ash Hollow Cave. The town sits near Johnson Lake and Elwood Reservoir, two of central Nebraska’s most popular walleye-fishing and recreation destinations.
Elwood (pop. 622), the Gosper County seat, was platted in 1885 along the CB&Q Railroad and won a hard-fought 1888 county-seat election. Its Art Deco courthouse is on the National Register of Historic Places, and the town sits near the popular Johnson Lake and Elwood Reservoir recreation areas.