Schuyler, Nebraska

History

In 1866, the Union Pacific Railroad reached present-day Schuyler, at the time known as Shell Creek Station. Three years later, the Nebraska State Legislature divided large Platte County into three smaller counties, including Colfax County. In 1870, Shell Creek Station was renamed Schuyler.

In 1870, the Union Pacific chose the town as the point at which Texas cattle being driven north would be loaded onto trains. With this, Schuyler became Nebraska's first "cow town". However, the resulting boom, which saw a six-fold increase in the town's population (from 100 to 600) and around 50,000 head of cattle pass through, was only temporary: the next year, the terminus of the cattle trail had moved west to Kearney.

The city's early residents were Czech, Irish, and German settlers. Settlement was enabled by Schuyler's geographic position, which caused the community to be associated with a number of historic overland transportation routes, including:

Beginning in the late 1980s, reductions in wages at the Cargill beef processing plant led to a change in Schuyler's demographic makeup. By 2017, an estimated 60% of the population was Latino, and immigrants from other parts of the world, including Somalia and Thailand, had also moved to the city.

From the History section of Schuyler, Nebraska on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.