Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Harrisburg, NE

Harrisburg is an unincorporated census-designated place and the county seat of Banner County in the Nebraska Panhandle — a county seat that has never incorporated as a municipality.

Harrisburg began with a homestead claimed in 1884, and the settlement that grew up around it was first called Randall and then Centropolis.

When Cheyenne County was subdivided in November 1888, the settlement fell within the new Banner County, whose seat was first placed at nearby Ashford.

In 1889 settler Charles Schooley donated part of his land for a formal townsite, and the name Harrisburg was chosen because one of the settlers had come from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Because of its central location, Harrisburg became the base for the county's stagecoach and mail lines, and county government moved there from Ashford in mid-1891.

By 1892 Harrisburg had two hotels, two livery stables, a brickworks, a cheese factory, two banks and three newspapers, serving a county devoted almost entirely to wheat farming and cattle ranching.

The railroad never reached Harrisburg, which limited its growth; oil, first discovered in the county in 1919, became Banner County's third major commodity in 1951.

The 2020 census counted 99 residents in Harrisburg, nearly unchanged from 100 in 2010; at the 2000 census the CDP had 75 residents in 31 households.

Harrisburg is part of the Scottsbluff, Nebraska micropolitan statistical area despite its tiny population.

Harrisburg has a cold semi-arid climate at about 4,629 feet elevation, and its recorded low of minus 44 degrees Fahrenheit, set on December 22, 1989, ranks among Nebraska's most extreme readings.