Bladen Nebraska 68928

Bladen is a village in northern Webster County with an unusual origin story: its predecessor was a small settlement called Wells, established in early 1872 by homesteaders Silas and Sylvia Wells and nicknamed "Pickleville" for Silas's successful cucumber-growing operation. When the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad surveyed its route through the county, Wells offered $3,000 to have the depot placed there, but the terrain proved unsuitable; the railroad instead bought land just east of Wells and laid track directly through the middle of town, and Wells quickly emptied out as merchants and residents relocated up onto the hill to the new townsite. That new town, surveyed in May 1886 by A.B. Smith for the Lincoln Land Company, was named Bladen for Ellen Bladen Gere, daughter of the founder of the Lincoln State Journal; the first passenger train arrived on Christmas Eve, 1886.

Bladen has hosted the Webster County Fair since 1906, when 57 shareholders purchased fairground land on the town's western edge (Webster County's agricultural fairs date back further still, to an 1873 organizing effort centered on Red Cloud). The fairgrounds once featured one of the finest half-mile harness-racing tracks in the state, and William Jennings Bryan spoke there at the 1912 fair. Webster County's first Baby Beef Club — only the second such club organized in the nation — formed in Bladen in 1919. Bladen also has a link to the county's Willa Cather legacy: Annie Sadilek Pavelka, the real-life inspiration for the title character of My Ántonia, is associated with the town.

Bladen grew up on a hillside townsite after the Burlington & Missouri Railroad bypassed its predecessor settlement, Wells ("Pickleville"), in 1886. Named for Ellen Bladen Gere, Bladen has hosted the Webster County Fair since 1906 and has ties to Annie Sadilek Pavelka, the inspiration for My Ántonia's title character.