24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Central City, NE

Central City is a city in and the county seat of Merrick County, Nebraska, in the Platte River valley, and is part of the Grand Island metropolitan area.

The city began in 1866 as Lone Tree, named for a huge lone cottonwood tree that served as a landmark for pioneers traveling the Mormon Trail, the Oregon Trail, and the California Trail.

Before white settlement, a village of the Chaui band of the Pawnee people stood on the present site of Central City in the late 1700s.

Merrick County was established by the territorial legislature in 1858 and named after Elvira Merrick; the first courthouse at Lone Tree was built in 1871, and the current courthouse dates to 1911–1913.

On July 1, 1875, the town's name was officially changed from Lone Tree to Central City, after supporters argued that 'Lone Tree' made the area sound desolate and would discourage new settlers.

By the 1880s Central City was a boomtown after the arrival of a second railroad, the Burlington & Missouri River, with three banks, a cracker factory, a cigar factory, a roller mill, three lumberyards, and nine churches built during its peak growth.

Nebraska Central College, a Methodist institution, opened in Central City in 1885, closed in 1891, was reopened by Quakers in 1899, and finally closed in 1953; its main building now houses Nebraska Christian High School.

The town's first newspaper, The Merrick County News, published its first edition on March 21, 1872, beginning a lineage that leads to today's Republican-Nonpareil.

During the winter of 1882–83, a diphtheria epidemic swept through Central City and killed many of the town's children.

Novelist Wright Morris lived in Central City from 1910 to 1919, and his boyhood home is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, along with the 1916 Martha Ellen Auditorium and the Riverside Park Dance Pavilion in Riverside Park.