Buffalo County Courthouse

Gibbon

The first Buffalo County Courthouse was locate in Gibbon

Kearney

Construction:

Kearney Hub
June 8, 1889 – E. Cole of Gibbon had unsuccessfully filed a restraining order against the county to keep them from constructing a courthouse in Kearney

June 10, 1890 – Buffalo head made of sheet metal put into place on the new courthouse. Adds to the beauty and novelty of the building. Plaque under it reads

Reader automatically knows to read “Buffalo County Court House 1890”

[1890] – The statue of justice was placed on top of the new courthouse.  It is nine feet tall, blind, balance in left hand, sword in right.

July 29, 1890 – The courthouse occupies 269 feet less ground than the Opera House.

Sept 5, 1890 (Friday) – County Treasurer Clerk of the District Court were moving into the new court house. Other offices would move in next week.

Oct. 7, 1890 – All new furniture in the court house is natural oak. Desks, matching swivel chairs, a table for each office, book cases. In the district court room an 8 foot desk for the judge with a “large and handsome chair behind it”, several tables and cane bottom chairs. Opera seats for the audience. Venetian blinds in the windows of oak also.

Apr 9, 1910 – First Things of Buffalo County by S. C. Bassett, “the first Court House”
        ….In the removal of the county seat the records were loaded in the night on a farm wagon by Joseph Scott, county clerk, and his deputy, F. G. Keens, arriving at Kearney Junction about 2 a. m., and were deposited in a heap on the floor in the Chandler building, being guarded until morning by Mr. Keens, then a lad of twenty-one years. The Chandler building then stood on the lot now occupied by the Presbyterian church and this building is still standing on the west side of Central avenue and is occupied as a millinery store. About July 1, 1875 the records were removed to the R. R. Greer building on Twenty-fourth street just west of the Catholic church and remained there until January 4, 1876. The Greer building is still standing on the east side of Central avenue and is occupied by Greeks as a shoe shining parlor. Much of the early history of county government was enacted in the Chandler and Greer buildings while occupied as county offices, one of the most exciting and important events being the second auction sale of lots in School Section No. 36 upon which lots then sold many of the buildings of the present city of Kearney now stand.
 

       During this period the sessions of the District Court were held in More’s Hall, now the upper floor of the Gilcrest Lumber Company building on Central Avenue.

        One of the inducements offered for the removal of the county seat was that the South Platte Land company and the Union Pacific railroad company would donate to the county a site for a court house and also erect a building for court house purposes. The site donated is the one now in use by the county which for a consideration on one dollar was deeded to the county December 27, 1875, and thereupon was erected in 1875 by the South Platte Land company and the Union Pacific railroad a cheap frame building, two stories high and used by the county until the erection of the present court house. This building was first occupied by the county in January, 1876 at its own expense.

        The county also erected on the court house site a small one story brick building.