Linoma Beach Nebraska

Unincorporated community · Sarpy County · Population 43 (2020 census) · resort from 1924; lighthouse 1939

About Linoma Beach

Linoma Beach is a former resort and census-designated place of 43 people on the east bank of the Platte River in southwestern Sarpy County, on US 6 about 7 miles southwest of Gretna and across the river from Ashland. Its name joins LINcoln and OMAha. The resort is a National Register historic district, and its 100-foot lighthouse is a landmark from the highway.

History

The Lyman-Richey Sand Company dug sand and gravel here from 1907 to 1915, leaving spring-fed lakes. Harry E. Schellberg and Lawrence G. Simpson turned the pits into a resort, which opened on July 4, 1924, with a bathhouse, picnic grounds and a restaurant, reached by a Burlington stop and the Omaha–Lincoln–Denver highway. A road and railroad realignment forced the dance pavilion out in 1931, and in 1939 Simpson built the lighthouse, about 100 feet tall, on a glass-and-masonry filling-station base.

Gas rationing in World War II cut the crowds, and the restaurant later closed. The district was listed on the National Register in 2003. After drownings in 2005 and 2009 the resort closed; investors bought it at foreclosure in 2010, and in 2011 the campground and beach were open again. The Linoma Lighthouse Foundation has been restoring the lighthouse since 2013; it is not open to the public. Floodwater from the Platte forced evacuations here in March 2019.

Things to see

Linoma Lighthouse (1939), seen from US 6 · Beacon View river cabins, just north across US 6 · Schramm Park SRA to the east · Ashland and Mahoney State Park across the Platte