Milford was platted in 1866 and named for a mill at a ford on the Big Blue River.

Part of the Lincoln Metropolitan Statistical Area, Milford is home to a Southeast Community College campus tracing back to a 1941 trade school, and is one of only 11 Nebraska cities with an official municipal flag, adopted in 2019 as an Eagle Scout project. It had a 2020 population of 2,155 and is the hometown of Culver City, California founder Harry Culver.