24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Otoe, NE

Otoe is a village in north-central Otoe County, Nebraska, sharing its name with the county in which it sits.

The village was established in 1880 on the proposed line of the Missouri Pacific Railroad running from Kansas City to Omaha.

Otoe was originally named Berlin, after the German capital, because many of its early inhabitants were German Lutherans.

The town incorporated in 1896, when its population reached 200.

A tornado in 1913 destroyed most of Berlin's businesses, but the town survived and rebuilt.

After the United States entered World War I, anti-German sentiment turned against the town, and a series of 1918 fires that destroyed a block of its main street was attributed to anti-German crusaders.

In October 1918, less than a month before the war's end, the town changed its name from Berlin to its current name, Otoe — although the surrounding Berlin Precinct kept the old name.

Otoe reached its maximum recorded population of 298 in the 1940 census.

Passenger rail service to Otoe was discontinued in 1932, its high school was closed in 1958, and the railroad line through town was abandoned in the 1960s.

The 2020 census counted 161 residents in Otoe, down from 171 in 2010, when the village had 67 households.