Bloomfield Nebraska 68718 - Nebraska Directory

Listings in Bloomfield Nebraska

Bloomfield, Nebraska

Bloomfield is a city of 986 people (2020 census) in eastern Knox County, in the rolling farmland and wooded valleys of the Northeast Region. It sits on Nebraska Highway 84 about fifteen miles south of the Missouri River and eight miles west of the Cedar County line, and it is the home of the Knox County Fair. The population has eased down over two decades — 1,126 in 2000, 1,028 in 2010, 986 in 2020 — from a peak of 1,467 in 1940.

Location

County: Knox County (seat: Center)
Region: Northeast Region
Land area: 0.82 square miles · Elevation: about 1,690 feet
Highways: NE-84 runs east–west through town; NE-121 meets it here and the two run together northward for about a mile before NE-121 splits off. US-81 is the nearest U.S. route, about 11 miles due east at its junction with NE-84.

Nearby Towns

Straight-line distances and directions:

Wausa – about 9 miles south-east
Center, the county seat – about 12 miles west
Crofton – about 12 miles north-east
Creighton, the county’s largest city – about 16 miles south-west
Hartington – about 19 miles east
Randolph – about 21 miles south-east
Niobrara – about 22 miles west-north-west
Yankton, South Dakota – about 23 miles north-east
Norfolk – about 41 miles south-south-east

Adjacent Counties

Knox County’s entire northern boundary is the Missouri River, which is also the Nebraska–South Dakota state line — so three of its eight neighbors are in South Dakota.

Cedar County – east
Pierce County – south-east
Antelope County – south
Holt County – west
Boyd County – north-west
Bon Homme County, South Dakota – north, across the Missouri
Yankton County, South Dakota – north-east, across the Missouri
Charles Mix County, South Dakota – north-west, across the Missouri

The Knox County Fair

Bloomfield hosts the Knox County Fair each August at the fairgrounds on East Main Street — the 143rd edition runs 13–16 August 2026. It is a full county fair rather than a village celebration: livestock and 4-H exhibits, a midway carnival, a Bull-A-Rama, a demolition derby, a kids’ pedal pull, cornhole, bingo, wood carving demonstrations, a beer garden with live bands and grandstand concerts. The fairgrounds also have a rodeo arena, lighted baseball and football fields, and camping.

Bloomfield also holds an annual horse show at Harm & Tulley’s Event Center.

Points of Interest

In town

Knox County Fairgrounds — rodeo arena, livestock facilities, lighted ball fields, camping
Harm & Tulley’s Event Center — livestock shows and sales, roping, team penning, exotic bird and animal sales
Bloomfield Community Historical Society Museum, established 2000
St. Andrew’s Grotto, built 1990
Private George Shannon Trail — Bloomfield holds one of thirteen statues placed across north-east Nebraska honouring the youngest member of the Lewis and Clark expedition
Rolling Hills Country Club, a nine-hole public course
City Park and Robin Schulz Memorial Park; a municipal heated outdoor pool open from early June to early August
Bloomfield Public Library, built in 2000 on the site of the old Pospeshil Theatre
Bloomfield Municipal Airport (84Y), two nautical miles south-west, with a 2,700-foot asphalt runway

Within reach

Lewis and Clark Lake and Gavins Point Dam — about 20 miles north, with Crofton as the gateway
Devil’s Nest, the rugged bluff country above the Missouri
Niobrara State Park at Niobrara, about 22 miles west-north-west
The Santee Sioux Reservation at Santee in north-western Knox County, with the Ohiya Casino and the Chief Standing Bear Memorial Bridge
Historic buildings at Crofton (the Argo Hotel) and Verdigre (the Z.C.B.J. Opera House), and the Knox County Courthouse at Center — all on the National Register

Note: Bloomfield itself has no National Register listing today. The Pospeshil Theatre of 1906 was listed in 1988 but was removed from the Register in 2019 after the building burned; the public library now stands on the site.

Schools

Bloomfield Community Schools (Nebraska district 54-0586) serves the city and about 233 square miles around it, running two buildings — Bloomfield Elementary at 514 South McNamara and Bloomfield Junior-Senior High at 311 East Benton — with roughly 270 to 290 students from preschool through twelfth grade. The teams are the Bees.

Health Care

Bloomfield has its own clinic, the Bloomfield Medical Clinic on East Main Street, but no hospital. The two nearest hospitals lie in roughly opposite directions, both about 16 or 17 miles away: Avera Creighton Hospital, 1503 Main Street in Creighton, to the south-west, and Osmond General Hospital, 402 North Maple Street in Osmond, to the south — both critical access hospitals. Avera Sacred Heart Hospital at Yankton, South Dakota, about 23 miles north-east, is the nearest larger regional center.

Historical Background

Bloomfield was born at a single day’s auction. On 2 October 1890 the North Nebraska Townsite Company put the townsite up for sale; four or five hundred men turned out, and the auctioneer Lavis Dennis sold lots for between $75 and $400. The post office opened a fortnight later, on 16 October 1890.

The name has two competing explanations. The better-sourced one, given in Perkey’s Names of Nebraska Locations, is that the town was named for Bloomfield Dyer, who once owned the land it stands on. The other, offered locally, is that it was named for the goldenrod blooming in the fields that autumn.

Its position — fifteen miles south of the river and eight miles west of the county line — kept Bloomfield in a forty-year argument over the county seat with Niobrara, Creighton and Verdigre. Center eventually won it, on the strength of being in the middle. The town grew to a peak of 1,467 people in 1940 and has been slowly contracting since. Its newspaper, the Bloomfield Monitor, is still published, now combined with the Creighton News as the Knox County News; a German-language paper, Die Bloomfield Germania, ran here until 1914.