Biohazard Cleanup Near Exeter Historic District Exeter, NE

Exeter is a village in eastern Fillmore County in south-central Nebraska, sitting on the divide between the south fork of the Big Blue River and Turkey Creek.

In 1870 Dr. Horace G. Smith filed a homestead claim at the site after scouting trips convinced him the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad would build past it, and the town was later laid out on land donated by Smith and James Dolan.

When the railroad established towns westward from Lincoln in 1871, it named them in alphabetical order: Crete, Dorchester, Exeter, Fairmont, Grafton, Harvard, Inland, Juniata, Kenesaw, and Lowell.

Exeter's name was proposed by a settler family that had come from Exeter, New Hampshire, and it conveniently fit the railroad's alphabetical sequence at the letter E.

Exeter was incorporated as a village on April 1, 1879, by which time it already had sixteen businesses.

Two large grain elevators were built in Exeter in 1878, and the town's first newspaper, the Enterprise, was founded the same year.

Exeter's population peaked at 941 in the 1930 census; the 2020 census counted 516 residents, down from 591 in 2010, when the village had 236 households.

Exeter shares a school district with the neighboring village of Milligan, forming the Exeter-Milligan Public Schools.

Village recreation centers on Gilbert's Park, home to the Exeter Aquatic Center, built in 2009, along with a ball field and picnic facilities, while the Edgar Recreation Center in the middle of town offers tennis and basketball courts.

Exeter is the hometown of Jeff Zeleny, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and CNN's chief national affairs correspondent.