Unadilla is a village in Otoe County, southeast of Lincoln. It was platted in 1871 as a railroad was pushed through, reportedly by settlers acting on advance word of where the line would run, and it was named after Unadilla in New York, the former home of an early settler. Before the town existed, a halfway house stood here for freighters, and a dam on the Little Nemaha River powered the Unadilla Roller Mills.
The village made its living moving grain and stock. Residents put up their own depot and stockyard in 1874 when the railroad did not, and an elevator built in 1880 handled around 90,000 bushels a year. The Bank of Unadilla was organized in 1888. Water shaped the place more than once: a flood in 1908 caused heavy damage and six deaths and cut the population to 209 by 1910, and a fire in 1911 destroyed most of the business district, sparing only a grocery and the bank.
What went up after that fire is what stands today. The village kept its original curved street plan through the rebuilding, finished by about 1913. The Unadilla Main Street Historic District, on the north side of Main Street between G and H streets, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995 for its significance in community planning and development between 1900 and 1924. The 2020 census counted 296 residents.
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Unadilla traces to 1864, when James Wallen built the area's first structure as a freight waystation. The village itself was platted in May 1871 by Strite and Catherine Axtell, who had advance knowledge of the coming Midland Pacific Railroad route, and took its name from Unadilla, New York, an Iroquois-derived word meaning "a place of meeting." A 1908 flood killed six residents, and a 1911 fire destroyed most of the commercial district, but the town rebuilt along its original curved street layout. The Unadilla Main Street Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the village has declared itself Nebraska's "Groundhog Capital" since 1988.
Unadilla, platted in 1871 along the Midland Pacific Railroad, calls itself Nebraska's "Groundhog Capital."
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