Biohazard Cleanup Near Plainview Historic District Plainview, NE

Plainview is a city in Pierce County in northeastern Nebraska and part of the Norfolk micropolitan area.

The Plainview area was first settled about 1871 by William B. Chilvers, and its first post office opened in 1872 under the name Roseville, after the first postmaster, Charles Rose.

In 1874, at the suggestion of settler Christian Lerum, the community was renamed Plainview — a name tied both to Plainview, Minnesota, and to the open view across the surrounding plains.

Plainview was platted in 1880 when the railroad reached the site and was incorporated in April 1886; its first school was a sod schoolhouse organized in 1872, and the Bank of Plainview, organized in 1884, was the town's first bank.

Plainview promotes itself as the 'Klown Kapital' of the world, with a Klown Doll Museum displaying more than 4,500 clown dolls and a Klown Festival held every June.

Plainview stood in for the fictional town of Hawthorne in the 2013 film Nebraska, in which much of the story takes place.

Plainview holds the distinction of being the first city in Nebraska with fiber-optic lines for every resident and business, served by an independent local telephone company.

Three Plainview structures are listed on the National Register of Historic Places: the Foy George Memorial Band Shell, the former Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad depot — now the Plainview Historical Museum — and the Carnegie library, which is still in use as a library.

The 2020 census counted 1,282 residents in Plainview; in the 2010 census the city had 1,246 residents in 562 households.

Plainview's population peaked at 1,494 in the 1970 census and has held between roughly 1,250 and 1,350 in recent decades.