Biohazard Cleanup Near West Juniata Juniata, NE

Juniata is an incorporated village in Adams County in south-central Nebraska, part of the Hastings micropolitan statistical area and today largely a commuter suburb of Hastings, about seven miles to the east.

Juniata is the oldest town in Adams County: it was platted and organized in late 1871 and immediately became the county's first county seat.

The Burlington Railroad named Juniata for the Juniata River in Pennsylvania.

The first settlers, members of the Michigan Colony, arrived in 1871 under the auspices of the Burlington Railroad, and the town was surveyed and platted that November.

Adams County's organizational election was held on December 12, 1871, at the home of Titus Babcock in Juniata, where just 29 votes were cast and Juniata was elected county seat.

Juniata hosted a string of county firsts: the first school district in Adams County (District No. 1, organized in 1871), the county's first newspaper, the Adams County Gazette (first published November 25, 1871), its first Methodist church (organized 1872), and its oldest cemetery (Juniata Cemetery, organized 1873).

The first train pulled into Juniata on June 8, 1872, and that same year the Commercial Hotel on Juniata Avenue was among the largest hotels in Nebraska west of Lincoln.

Juniata was an early milling center: its first mill was built in 1874, and grain from across south-central Nebraska and north-central Kansas was brought there to be ground into flour and feed.

On April 12, 1872, the county commissioners refused a $75,000 bond request from the St. Joseph and Denver City Railroad, which instead built seven miles east and founded Hastings; after a five-year "Great County Seat War," Hastings took the county seat from Juniata in September 1878.

A tornado in 1960 destroyed Juniata's distinctive two-story town pump topped with a bandstand, which had stood at Juniata Avenue and Tenth Street since 1904, and the village's last disastrous fire came in 1961.