Grand Island: The Platte River Crossroads

Grand Island, Nebraska, takes its name from a large wooded island in the Platte River that French fur traders had called La Grande Isle. The town grew from a German settlement planted here in eighteen fifty-seven by a group of German settlers from Davenport, Iowa. When the Union Pacific Railroad pushed through in eighteen sixty-six, Grand Island became a division point, a place where crews changed and engines were serviced, and it grew into the commercial center of central Nebraska.

The Platte River valley had been the highway of the Great Migration, the route of the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails through the eighteen forties and fifties. Hundreds of thousands of emigrants passed through, following the river's gentle grade westward. Today Grand Island is a city of roughly fifty-three thousand people, a processing and distribution center for the surrounding agricultural economy, sitting exactly where those migration trails once converged.