Fremont: Where the Union Pacific Wintered

Fremont, Nebraska was named for General John C. Fremont, the Pathfinder who mapped great stretches of the American West in the eighteen forties. The town's strategic location on the Platte River valley made it an early focus for the Union Pacific Railroad: in the winter of eighteen sixty-five and sixty-six, Union Pacific completed its tracks to Fremont, and the construction crews used the town as their winter quarters through that first building season.

By eighteen seventy-six, Fremont was exporting more than forty-two million pounds of grain annually. It also became the junction that the Sioux City and Pacific Railroad was built to reach, connecting Sioux City, Iowa to the Union Pacific main line at Fremont, a link that shaped the commercial geography of the entire lower Missouri corridor.