Discreet 24/7 Biohazard Remediation in Shelby, NE

Shelby is an incorporated village in Polk County in east-central Nebraska, lying along U.S. Highway 81 near the eastern edge of the county.

Nebraska's center of population — the point where the state would balance if every resident weighed the same — is located near Shelby.

Shelby's roots go back to 1873, when Civil War veteran Horace A. Cowles set up the Cyclone post office in his home about a mile from the present-day village.

When the railroad arrived in 1879, a second post office named Arcade was established a mile east of today's Shelby, and in the winter of 1880 the post office moved to the present townsite.

Postal authorities objected to the name Arcade because it was confused with Arcadia in Loup County, so residents chose the name Shelby, honoring an official of the Omaha and Republican Valley Railway, a branch of the Union Pacific.

Landowners Gilbert Van Vorce and Peter Matter gave the railroad company a half interest in their property to secure the town as a trade center for the surrounding farms.

By 1880 Shelby already had 93 residents and a business district with a drug store, hardware store, hotel, boot and shoe shop, livery stable, and a physician.

The population of Shelby was 710 at the 2020 census, nearly unchanged from 714 at the 2010 census, when the village had 290 households.

Shelby is governed by an elected Board of Trustees — a chairperson and four board members serving four-year terms — and it celebrated its centennial in 1979 and its quasquicentennial in 2004.

Farming, cattle feeding, hog production, and retailing are the basic economic activities of the village.