If you're careful about how you define things, every village and city in Nebraska can probably claim a first in something. McCook in Red Willow County is no exception, with having had the first junior college in the state.
Red Willow County established a post office in Fairview in 1879, but no settlement occurred. In 1882, however, the Lincoln Land Company, a subsidiary of the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad in Nebraska, built its line nearby and then moved the Fairview post office to McCook and changed its name accordingly. Education was one of the rapidly growing railroad town’s first concerns, with high school classes hastily convened in the Commercial Hotel’s dining room until a proper school could be built two years later.
By the 1920s, many Nebraska communities had planned and even created a number of colleges in the state. McCook debated the idea feeling the University of Nebraska at Lincoln was too far away, too expensive and classes too large for its students. Still, it felt a local university or college was above its means.
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To that end, the local school board created McCook Junior College in 1926, with the first year’s 43 students paying $50 per semester for classes held on the second floor of the Y.M.C.A. The building proved ideal as the students also could avail themselves to the building’s facilities including the gymnasium and swimming pool. The McCook school board pointed out, it furnished the “opportunity to complete the first two years of a college education under home influences … at half the cost … and serve as an incentive … to continue college work.”
The McCook Junior College thus became the first junior college in Nebraska with one small problem … the state legislature had not authorized or approved its creation. Even though its existence was not officially sanctioned, the junior college celebrated its first graduating class of 25 in 1928. Junior college legislation failed in 1927 and 1929 but finally was approved in 1931 with the provision that such schools were to be part of the local high school system as mere extensions of high school classes and that the superintendent of schools automatically became president of the college.
In 1935, Maude McMillen erected a building at 1205 E. Third St. “in Kelley Park … as a memorial to her son” and classes moved immediately from the Y.M.C.A. to McMillen Hall with True Hall built soon afterward to house student athletics and other school offices. The W.P.A. built a stadium for the junior college in 1939 northeast of the city’s nine-hole golf course. School enrollment was 140 students.
Ralph Gilmour Brooks was born in Eustis in 1898, attended Nebraska Wesleyan University and graduated from the University Law College in 1925. Brooks moved to McCook in 1946 where he became superintendent of schools and automatically president of McCook Junior College. In 1958, Brooks was elected the 29th governor of Nebraska and died in office having just been nominated for the U.S. Senate.
As early as 1950, a discussion of establishing a branch of the University of Nebraska at North Platte was floated but dropped when the city established a junior college in the post office building at Fifth and Jeffers in 1965. The initial 200 students each paid tuition of $80 per semester.
McCook Junior College, meanwhile, had built Brooks Residence Hall for 70 students in 1960 becoming the first junior college in the state to have a dormitory.
The state’s only technical school in Milford was joined by the newly renamed Mid-Plains Vocational Technical School at North Platte in 1966. In 1971, the legislature announced plans to merge the state’s junior colleges and voc-tech schools as “occupational education” schools which allowed McCook to separate itself from the school board and become an independent taxing authority, to be known as McCook Community College.
McCook and North Platte community colleges merged in 1973 becoming Mid-Plains Technical Community College. Today, with around 16,000 students the combined schools have campuses in Broken Bow, Imperial, Ogallala, McCook, North Platte and Valentine while tuition has crept to nearly $3,000. The McCook branch has now grown to about 17 square blocks and True Hall is considered “the most prominent architectural landmark on the campus.”
Historian Jim McKee, who still writes with a fountain pen, invites comments or questions. Write to him in care of the Journal Star or at jim@leebooksellers.com.