For several decades, beginning in the 1870s, as farmers and settlers moved into Nebraska, the railroads initiated the majority of the towns that were established across the state. The railroad’s steam engines needed services every seven to 10 miles with their sidings providing shipping and receiving points which in turn spawned settlements.
With the passage of time and the demise of small railroad branches, some, particularly those near highways, prospered while many dwindled and others disappeared. Cortland, whose site was originally in Old Clay County, is an example of a village that grew, shrank and is slowly again growing as a bedroom and retirement center.
Under its original federal charter, the Union Pacific Railroad was not allowed to build branch lines, however there was no prohibition for its encouraging such small lines even to the point of supplying them with materials and construction supplies which ultimately fed freight and passengers to their main line.
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In August of 1876 the Omaha & Republican Valley Railroad was incorporated as an “agricultural branch line†partially supported and funded by Saunders County bonds. In 1877 the railroad’s first line ran from Valley to Rising City, ultimately terminating in Stromsburg.
J. H. Millard and his brother Ezra purchased a tract of land from Alfred Gates in northern Gage County for $2,800 subsequent to a major portion of Gates’ land having been acquired by the Omaha & Republican Valley Railroad for $400. The Millards, who had been active in land, banking street railways, hotels and even establishing the village of Millard, Nebraska, in 1884, platted a village first named Galesburg.
The U. S. Post Office Department turned down the name Galesburg as being too easily confused with other cities of the same name and the name Courtland, after a city in New York state. was chosen and ultimately respelled Cortland. Lots in the 25-block tract were quickly sold in the high-sited village for an average of $125.
The Omaha & Republican Valley Railroad, split from its original line at Valparaiso, headed south, by April of 1880 reached Lincoln and in 1884 opened its new 24 by 76 foot frame depot in a cornfield on the north side of Cortland’s Fourth Street. Passengers from Cortland were charged $1.30 for a trip to Beatrice or $1.80 to Lincoln. The village was an almost instantaneous success and by 1904 there were two grain elevators, a bank, stockyard, two hotels, a lumberyard, two saloons, a 600-seat opera house/I.O.O.F. hall and a newspaper. Also, the O. & R. V. Railroad had, the same year, been sold to the newly reorganized Union Pacific Railroad Company.
The precursor of what today is known as the Cortland United Church began as the Pilgrim Congregational Church, which met in a schoolhouse about five miles southwest of Cortland in 1875. As Cortland began to develop the Congregational Church began meeting in the two-story White’s Hall in Cortland in 1884 but then purchased the church building originally built by the Free Will Baptists at Fifth and Sheridan in the city for $600. Although an addition was constructed the building still proved inadequate for the growing congregation and in 1918 fundraising for a new building began with Lincoln architect Alfred Woods hired to design the new structure.
The following year the old building was razed, with services moved again to White’s Hall which had just been purchased by Fred DeVries, who had removed the second floor and converted the frame structure to a meeting hall/opera house. The cornerstone for the new church was laid Nov. 30, 1919.
While construction continued, the Highland Center Congregational Church merged with First Congregational in Cortland becoming the 200-member Pilgrim Congregational Church. The new $45,000, stone building, as picture, was dedicated May 15, 1921. The 600-seat church, also called the “Community Center,†featured a large number of stained glass windows, a kitchen and basement gymnasium. In 1957 the church voted to become part of the United Church of Christ, absorbed a church in Hallam and was renamed the Cortland United Church.
Cortland’s 1890 census showed a population of 509, which slowly declined for decades and, although its high school closed in 1966 to emerge as part of Norris District 160, the city’s population slowly rebounded with the 2017 estimate showing a population of 474 with 40 businesses in operation.
The railroad abandoned the 78 mile Lincoln-Marysville, Kansas, line through Cortland in 2000 with portions becoming the Jamaica North Trail in 2006. One visible reminder of what originally caused Cortland’s birth in 1884 now exists on the trail as the 1895 “pass-through truss†bridge over Salt Creek.
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.
