Franklin, Nebraska: Republican River Homestead Town

Franklin, Nebraska was founded in November of eighteen seventy by the Knight Colony, a group of settlers who arrived in the Republican River valley and staked their claim to what had until recently been Pawnee hunting range. The county was organized in eighteen seventy-one, with Franklin as its first county seat. Named for Benjamin Franklin, the town grew modestly until the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad arrived in eighteen seventy-nine, driving the county population from a handful of settlers to over five thousand by eighteen eighty-two.

The railroad transformed Franklin from a frontier outpost into a functioning small city. Nearby Bloomington held the county seat from eighteen seventy-four until nineteen twenty, when Franklin reclaimed it. The town today serves the surrounding farmland of south-central Nebraska.