McCook, Nebraska, Senator Norris's Town

McCook, the seat of Red Willow County, was platted in eighteen eighty-two when the Burlington Railroad pushed into southwestern Nebraska. The town was named for General Alexander McCook, a Union Civil War officer. Its most famous resident was Senator George Norris, who lived here from nineteen hundred until his death in nineteen forty-four.

Norris served in Congress for forty years and left a remarkable mark: he led the fight to strip autocratic power from the House Speaker in nineteen ten, wrote the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution, and was the chief architect of the Tennessee Valley Authority, signed into law in nineteen thirty-three. The TVA brought electricity to millions of rural Americans. Norris stands as one of the great progressive legislators in American history, and his adopted hometown of McCook keeps his legacy.