Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Stella, NE

Stella is an incorporated village in Richardson County, Nebraska's easternmost county, where the Missouri River forms the state border.

The earliest settlers in the Stella area arrived about 1855, more than two decades before the town itself existed.

An August 1881 public meeting of local farmers arranged for the Missouri Pacific Railroad to be extended to the site, and Stella was platted that same year.

Stella was named for Stella Clark, the daughter of the original owner of the town site.

The railroad track reached Stella in December 1881, and a station building was raised on January 7, 1882.

The village was incorporated in 1882 and grew quickly, with 25 business firms operating in town by the fall of that year.

In 1901 the Stella Press issued a 56-page "Souvenir" documenting the town at its peak, when it supported five churches, nine lodges, a school that had begun in 1884, a water system begun in 1887, an opera house built in 1898, and telephones introduced in 1899.

Stella's population peaked at 498 in the 1900 census; the 2020 census counted about 150 residents, and in 2010 the village's 152 residents lived in 78 households with a median age of 56 years.

The village covers just 0.18 square miles along Nebraska Highway 62 in southeastern Nebraska.

Stella students are served by the Humboldt Table Rock Steinauer Public Schools; the Southeast Nebraska Consolidated Schools district, which once operated a school in Stella, merged into that district on January 1, 2009.