Sunday, March 1, 2015

12 Nebraska towns you've likely never heard of

The Lincoln Journal-Star has written about 12 little-known Nebraska towns.
See how many of them you know -- or maybe have actually visited!
CLICK HERE
We were familiar half of the communities -- and actually have visited some of them.  Of course, there were a few we'd never heard of.  But we suspect that many Omaha and Lincoln-area residents haven't heard of Marsland or Antioch, or numerous other tiny panhandle settlements -- some of which today would likely be considered "ghost" towns.

Information about these little-known towns was gleaned from what's called the Virtual Nebraska project, which "emerged out of the Consortium for the Application of Space Data to Education (CASDE) project, which began in September 1995, after Senator Bob Kerrey challenged personnel of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to find a better way to apply NASA's space data holdings to education."

The site was created by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It offers a wealth of information, including Landsat satellite photos, color infra-red images, educational modules, tutorials, and much more.

One of those components is Nebraska -- Our Towns. It deals with historical information about cities and towns all across the state, searchable by county and/or town name.  A few years back we contributed a bit about Whitney to the Our Towns database in the form of a link pointing to our Whitney Reflections website.  

As you explore Our Towns and read through information about Chadron, Whitney, Crawford, Marsland, and other communities in Dawes County and Nebraska, you'll probably find that the information is far from comprehensive, and there is likely information that needs to be better documented.  

Nonetheless, we found Virtual Nebraska to be not only an enjoyable diversion for learning about Nebraska communities, it also contains a real abundance of information that any Nebraska should find interesting and helpful.

Enjoy!