Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near Carter Hickman, NE

Hickman is a small city in southern Lancaster County, Nebraska, and part of the Lincoln metropolitan statistical area.

Hickman exists because of a spelling mistake: Reverend C. H. Heckman platted the town as "Heckman" in 1872, but when the plat was submitted to Lancaster County for recording, the name was misspelled as "Hickman," and the error stuck.

Reverend Heckman, the town's founder, bought land near Salt Creek on what had been open prairie before 1866, after a station was accepted there on the Atchison and Nebraska Railroad between Rulo and Lincoln.

The city was incorporated under the name Hickman in 1885.

Hickman is one of Nebraska's fastest-growing small cities: its population jumped from 1,657 in the 2010 census to 2,607 in 2020, a gain of more than 57 percent in a decade.

The 2020 census counted 827 households in Hickman, and an exceptional 57.8 percent of them included children under 18, giving the city a young median age of 32.8 years.

For most of its history Hickman was a tiny farm town — it had only 341 residents in 1890 and still fewer than 300 in 1950 — before Lincoln's suburban growth reached it late in the twentieth century.

Hickman's children attend Norris School District 160, the consolidated district based north of town that also serves Firth, Holland, Roca and other southern Lancaster County communities.