Metro Nebraska

Cass County at a Glance

Cass County, Nebraska — proclaimed 23 November 1854 among the original eight counties and defined by the Territorial Legislature on 7 March 1855; both dates are correct at different stages. Named for General Lewis Cass, Michigan territorial governor and the 1848 Democratic presidential nominee. County seat Plattsmouth, which began in 1854 as a trading post called the Barracks and was incorporated as a city in March 1855. The seat was fought over in 1888–89, when outlying precincts led by Weeping Water argued the courthouse was a full day’s travel away — History Nebraska calls it “a glorious fight” of charge and counter-charge. Plattsmouth won in district court and again in the Nebraska Supreme Court. 457 listings across 17 towns.

Getting there: Interstate 80 crosses the northwest corner — exits 420 and 426 are both in Cass County, not Saunders, whatever the Ashland addresses suggest. US-75 runs north and south along the Missouri, US-6 east and west, with NE-1, 50, 66 and 67. The Burlington & Missouri River Railroad entered Nebraska at Plattsmouth in 1870, and most Cass villages date themselves by which line arrived. Central Time.

For visitors: this is the state-park corner of Nebraska. Platte River State Park (453 acres, created 1982, two miles west of Louisville) has full-hookup camping, cabins, tipis, two observation towers and about ten miles of trail. Louisville State Recreation Area adds 192 acres and five sandpit lakes. Eugene T. Mahoney State Park and the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum both sit at I-80 exit 426 with Ashland addresses. The county is limestone country — Ash Grove Cement has quarried at Louisville since 1927 across some 4,000 acres.

Two names local lists claim that belong elsewhere: Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and only spent his early childhood in Plattsmouth; Bess Streeter Aldrich was born at Cedar Falls, Iowa, and moved to Elmwood in 1909 — though her house there, The Elms, is genuinely on the National Register.

Cass County · Metro · Interstate 80 Corridor · Explore Nebraska

Dodge County at a Glance

Dodge County, Nebraska — named for Augustus C. Dodge, the Iowa senator who co-sponsored the Kansas–Nebraska Act. County seat Fremont, named for the explorer and 1856 presidential candidate John C. Frémont, and now Nebraska’s sixth-largest city. The county sits where the Platte and Elkhorn rivers come together, on the old Mormon and military road west, and it grew as a rail and milling town before becoming a food-processing centre. 398 listings across 11 towns.

Getting there: US-30 east and west, US-275 toward Omaha and Norfolk, plus US-77, NE-79 and NE-91. Dodge County has no interstate — it is served by I-80 some twenty miles south. Union Pacific and BNSF both run through, and the Fremont & Elkhorn Valley Railroad operates heritage excursions. Central Time.

The March 2019 flood defines the county’s recent history. When the Platte and Elkhorn broke out together, every road into Fremont was cut and the city became an island, supplied by air and by boat. It is the single most important thing to understand about the geography here: this is a two-river confluence town on flat bottomland, and the rivers matter.

For visitors: Fremont Lakes State Recreation Area — twenty sandpit lakes west of town, with camping, boating and swimming, and one of the busiest state areas in eastern Nebraska. The Fremont & Elkhorn Valley Railroad runs tourist trains toward Hooper. Midland University has been in Fremont since 1919. Hooper, Scribner, North Bend and Snyder are the Elkhorn-valley farm towns strung along the rail lines.

Economy: food processing dominates. The big pork plant — about 1,500 workers — is WholeStone Farms, which bought the site from Hormel in December 2018 for $30 million with a continuing supply agreement; Hormel had owned it since 1947 and it was one of only two Spam plants in the country. Anything describing Hormel as Fremont’s largest employer is out of date. A large Costco poultry complex also operates here.

Born here: actress Marg Helgenberger was born in Fremont in 1958 and raised at North Bend. Two names local lists claim that belong elsewhere: Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore, was born on a homestead near Bear Lake, Idaho, in 1867 — his family was living in Fremont by the time he was seven; and Ben Sasse was born at Plainview in Pierce County, though he grew up in Fremont and later led Midland University there.

Dodge County · Metro · Highway 30 Corridor · Explore Nebraska

Douglas County at a Glance

Douglas County, Nebraska — created 23 November 1854, one of the eight original counties proclaimed by acting territorial governor Thomas B. Cuming, and named for Stephen A. Douglas, author of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. County seat Omaha, never contested, and capital of Nebraska Territory until statehood moved it to Lincoln in 1867. The decisive fact in the county’s history is that President Lincoln designated Omaha the eastern terminus of the Union Pacific — the city became the anchor of the first transcontinental railroad and earned its nickname, the Gate City. The South Omaha Union Stockyards grew into one of the world’s great livestock and meatpacking centres, the largest anywhere by the late 1950s, and closed in 1999. Population 584,526 (2020), about 606,000 today — Nebraska’s most populous county, and its third-smallest by area. 1,133 listings across 8 towns.

Getting there: Interstate 80 with I-480 and I-680, US-75, US-6 and US-275, plus NE-31, 36, 50, 64, 85, 92 and 133. Eppley Airfield handled 5,225,232 passengers in 2025 and has more operations than every other Nebraska airport combined. Union Pacific is headquartered here and runs its national network from the Harriman Dispatching Center; Amtrak’s California Zephyr stops daily. Central Time.

For visitors: the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium — named best zoo in the United States by USA Today 10Best in March 2026, its fourth year running — along with the Old Market Historic District, the Joslyn Art Museum, Lauritzen Gardens, and the Durham Museum in the old Union Station. Charles Schwab Field hosts the College World Series. Boys Town is an incorporated village inside the city and a National Historic Landmark. The county holds 189 National Register listings, three of them National Historic Landmarks.

Born here: Malcolm X (1925), President Gerald Ford (1913, as Leslie Lynch King Jr.), Fred Astaire (1899), Marlon Brando (1924), Warren Buffett (1930, still in the house he bought here in 1958), Bob Gibson (1935), Montgomery Clift, Gabrielle Union, film-maker Alexander Payne, and boxer Terence “Bud” Crawford, who retired undefeated in 2025 as undisputed champion in three divisions. Henry Fonda is Omaha’s most-claimed son but was born in Grand Island; the family moved here when he was one.

Douglas County · Metro · Interstate 80 Corridor · Explore Nebraska

Sarpy County at a Glance

Sarpy County, Nebraska — organised 7 February 1857 when the Territorial Legislature split off the southern half of Douglas County, and named for the fur trader Peter A. Sarpy, the dominant figure of the lower Missouri trade in the 1830s and 40s. Bellevue held the county seat first, with a courthouse built in 1861, but lost it in the contest of 1873–75: after a preliminary vote eliminated Bellevue, Papillion’s business leaders raised $10,000, built a courthouse on donated land, laid the cornerstone on 3 July 1875 with cannon fire and a free community dinner, and won the runoff on 6 April 1875. Only the first floor of that building survives, at 136 North Jefferson Street. Bellevue is the oldest continuously inhabited town in Nebraska. 281 listings across 5 towns.

Getting there: Interstate 80, US-75 and US-6, plus NE-31, 50, 85 and 370. BNSF and Union Pacific both run through, and the old MoPac name survives on the rail-trail at Springfield. Central Time.

The defining fact is Offutt. Fort Crook was commissioned in 1890; the airfield opened in 1918 and was renamed for the WWI pilot Lt. Jarvis Offutt in 1924. The Glenn L. Martin bomber plant here built 531 B-29 Superfortresses before the end of the war — among them Enola Gay and Bockscar. Strategic Air Command was headquartered here from November 1948 for more than forty years, and the base now hosts US Strategic Command, the 55th Wing and the 557th Weather Wing.

For visitors: Fontenelle Forest at Bellevue, Chalco Hills Recreation Area and Wehrspann Lake in the northwest of the county, Walnut Creek Lake at Papillion, and Werner Park, home of the Omaha Storm Chasers. Gifford Point, inside a Missouri River bend below Bellevue, is the county’s big block of bottomland timber. Springfield is the one genuinely independent small town and hosts the Sarpy County Fair each August.

Nebraska’s third most populous county and its fastest-growing — 190,604 at the 2020 census and about 208,000 by 2025, having never once declined. It is also the smallest county in the state by area. La Vista was created in 1959 by a developer selling 335 houses at $9,999 apiece, which is why it was nicknamed the House of Nines.

A note on notable names: Sarpy is young and suburban, and its best-known figures served here rather than were born here. The one verified native is NFL fullback Andy Janovich, born at Gretna in 1993.

Sarpy County · Metro · Interstate 80 Corridor · Explore Nebraska

Saunders County at a Glance

Saunders County, Nebraska — created 26 January 1856 as Calhoun County, renamed in 1862 for Alvin Saunders, the last territorial governor, and organised 8 October 1867. The county-seat story is the best in the metro: the wedge-shaped Ashland Precinct was detached from Cass County and added to Saunders in 1866 purely so Ashland could compete for the seat. Governor Saunders objected to splitting a township between two counties, then relented — “it was not my place to prevent a transfer desired by the people of the two counties.” Ashland won in October 1867 and held it six years; by 1873 pressure for a central site produced a new vote, Wahoo won, and it has never moved again. The 1904 courthouse is still in use. 321 listings across 18 towns.

Getting there: US-6 and 92 and 109. Interstate 80 does not enter Saunders County. Ashland is served by exits 420 and 426, but both lie across the Platte in Cass County, and the interstate crosses straight from Cass into Sarpy. Central Time.

The five famous sons of Wahoo — all five genuinely born there. Darryl F. Zanuck (1902), co-founder of 20th Century Fox, three Best Picture Oscars and the only person to win the Thalberg Award twice. Sam “Wahoo Sam” Crawford (1880), whose 309 career triples remains a Major League record nobody has approached. Howard Hanson (1896), Pulitzer Prize winner and director of the Eastman School of Music for forty years; his Wahoo house is on the National Register. George Wells Beadle (1903), Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1958. And C. W. Anderson (1891), who wrote and illustrated the Billy and Blaze books. The Saunders County Museum in Wahoo displays their belongings.

For visitors: Ashland exists because Salt Creek there had a low, rocky bottom wagons could cross — a key ford on the Oxbow branch of the Oregon Trail. Cedar Bluffs was a stop on the Mormon, Oregon and California trails before it was a town. Settlement was heavily Czech, German and Scandinavian: Prague named for Bohemia in 1887, Malmo for Malmö the same year. 22 National Register listings, and Lake Wanahoo on dammed Sand Creek. The county reached 22,278 in 2020 — the first census to pass its 1900 peak.

Two names worth getting right: astronaut Clayton Anderson is deeply identified with Ashland and it is genuinely his hometown, but he was born in Omaha; and Jeff Raikes grew up in Ashland, though no source gives his birthplace at all.

Saunders County · Metro · Highway 6 Corridor · Explore Nebraska

Washington County at a Glance

Washington County, Nebraska — authorised in 1854 as one of the eight original counties and organised in 1855, named for George Washington, pointedly so: the Territorial Legislature fixed its first boundaries on 22 February 1855, Washington’s birthday. The county seat moved twice — Fort Calhoun first, then DeSoto, then Blair, chosen by popular vote in 1869 and the seat ever since. Blair was platted that same year when the railroad arrived and is named for the magnate John Insley Blair, who brought the line. DeSoto is now an unincorporated place — a county seat that became a ghost town, its name surviving on the national wildlife refuge. 101 listings across 6 towns.

Getting there: US-75 runs north and south through Blair and Fort Calhoun, US-30 east and west, with Highway 91 and NE-133 also crossing. The Lincoln Highway ran through Blair. Central Time.

This is where Lewis and Clark held their first council. On 3 August 1804 the expedition met Oto and Missouria leaders on the west bank near present-day Fort Calhoun, at the place they named Council Bluff. Fort Atkinson was built on that spot in 1819 — the first United States Army post west of the Missouri River — and operated until 1827. Briefly it was Nebraska’s first settlement of more than a thousand people, thirty years before Nebraska Territory existed. It is a National Historic Landmark and is preserved today as Fort Atkinson State Historical Park.

For visitors: Fort Atkinson, and the two national wildlife refuges — DeSoto and Boyer Chute, both of which are in this county, whatever nearby pages may say. DeSoto holds the Bertrand, a sternwheel steamboat that sank in 1865 and was found on refuge ground in 1968; excavation recovered more than 500,000 items, one of the great intact time capsules of the Missouri River trade. Note that the DeSoto visitor centre is on the Iowa side at Missouri Valley, even though 54 percent of the refuge acreage is in Nebraska.

A two-phase county. Population peaked at 13,086 in 1900, sagged for half a century to a trough of 11,511 in 1950, and has climbed ever since to an all-time high of 20,865 at the 2020 census, about 21,100 today — a nineteenth-century farm county that became a northern edge of the Omaha metro. Fontanelle was platted in 1855 specifically to become the state capital; the plan collapsed and the capital went to Lincoln. The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station, at 478 megawatts the smallest active nuclear plant in the United States when it closed on 24 October 2016, is in decommissioning.

Born here: Otto Diller Schmidt, Medal of Honor recipient, born at Blair in 1884 and decorated for heroism during the boiler explosion aboard USS Bennington in 1905; and Floyd Zaiger, born at Kennard in 1926, the most prolific stone-fruit breeder of the modern era and the man who created the pluot and the aprium, with 446 patented varieties to his name. Senator Paul Simon appears on local lists but was born in Eugene, Oregon — he attended Dana College in Blair without graduating.

Washington County · Metro · Highway 75 Corridor · Explore Nebraska