Lodgepole, Nebraska: Named for Tipi Poles

Lodgepole, Nebraska takes its name from the creek it sits beside, and that creek takes its name from the assumption that Native peoples once came here to cut slender pines for their tipi poles. The Union Pacific Railroad established a station along Lodgepole Creek in eighteen sixty-seven, one of dozens of stops it planted across the Nebraska panhandle. Little permanent settlement followed until the early eighteen eighties, and the town was formally platted in eighteen eighty-four.

In its early years a company of United States soldiers from nearby Sidney Barracks camped here to guard the tracks. Lodgepole incorporated in nineteen oh one and today is a Cheyenne County village of about three hundred people, the creek and its cottonwood corridor still marking the valley below the High Plains.