Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Edgar, NE

Edgar is a small city in southeastern Clay County, Nebraska, sitting in the Little Blue River valley just north of the routes of the old Oregon and California trails.

Edgar's first post office opened in June 1872 in a log cabin on the A. J. Ritterbush farm, a month before the St. Joseph and Denver City Railroad completed its tracks to the site.

The railroad first laid out the town under the name Eden in 1872, and the town site was formally surveyed in May 1873 on land pre-empted by Henry Gipe with backing from the Nebraska Land and Town Site Company.

Edgar was incorporated on March 15, 1875, and was named for the son of a pioneer settler.

A second railroad, the Nebraska and Colorado line of the Burlington system, arrived in 1886 and helped Edgar grow into a small manufacturing center with a creamery, a brick and tile company, a cannery, and several mills.

Edgar's congregations organized early: the Presbyterian church dates to 1877, the Methodist church to 1878, and the Baptist church to 1881.

Telephone service reached Edgar in 1899 and electricity in 1905, and the town built its public library in 1926.

Edgar boomed quickly in its railroad youth, reaching 1,105 residents in 1890, and still counted about 1,000 people in 1910.

The population has declined steadily since that peak: the 2010 census counted 498 people in 212 households, and the 2020 census counted 428 residents.

Edgar is part of the Hastings, Nebraska Micropolitan Statistical Area, tying the small city's economy to the larger city of Hastings to its west.