Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Hershey, NE

Hershey is a village in Lincoln County in west-central Nebraska, served by ZIP code 69143, and it is part of the North Platte micropolitan statistical area.

Hershey began as a station on the Union Pacific Railroad and was named for J. H. Hershey, a pioneer settler.

The original townsite, just 24 lots in two square blocks, was platted on February 5, 1892, by Annie S. Guthrie, and the village was incorporated in April 1909.

By 1900 Hershey had only about 80 residents in some 20 families, but it grew quickly, gaining a newspaper, the Hershey Times, in 1911 and public water and electric lights in 1913.

Hershey sits between the North Platte and South Platte rivers amid irrigated farmland historically devoted to stock raising, alfalfa, and sugar beets.

In 1919, rail shipments out of Hershey included 904 carloads of hay and 279 carloads of sugar beets.

Railroad and sugar beet work drew Russian German, Swedish, Japanese, and Mexican immigrant families to Hershey in the early 1900s, and those families became lasting parts of the community.

Hershey was the boyhood home of Ben Kuroki, a Japanese American farm boy who became an aerial gunner and flew 58 combat missions during World War II.

Kuroki was the only Japanese American to serve in air combat in the Pacific theater of World War II, and he earned three Distinguished Flying Crosses.

The 2020 census counted 649 people in Hershey, just below the 2010 count of 665 people in 266 households.