24/7 Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup in Tamora, NE

Tamora is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Seward County, Nebraska; today it consists mainly of a large grain elevator complex and a small residential district, with no commercial district.

Tamora was first settled in 1879, when four men each donated 10 acres of land for a townsite in order to persuade the Burlington Railroad, which had built westward from Seward in 1877, to put in a siding and station.

The town's name is a frontier pronunciation of "tomorrow": the four founders each wanted the town named for himself, deadlocked, and put the decision off until later.

Tamora was incorporated in 1888, and by 1920 it had more than 200 residents and, at its commercial peak, over thirty businesses, including two banks and the Tamora Times newspaper.

In 1892 local promoters tried to move the Seward County seat to Tamora and started building what they hoped would become the courthouse, but support collapsed, the project was abandoned, and the foundation was eventually filled in.

Without a fire department, Tamora lost many of its commercial buildings to fires that were never rebuilt, its post office closed in 1970, and its population fell to a low of 50 by 1980.

Even as the town shrank, its grain facilities grew: the local farmers' cooperative built a concrete grain elevator in 1962 and, in 1978, one of the largest grain elevators in Nebraska.

After years of feuding on the village board and a failed 1990 vote, Tamora's electors voted 30 to 6 in 1997 to unincorporate, returning the community to unincorporated status.

The 2020 census counted 44 residents in the Tamora census-designated place, down from 58 in 2010; the last census taken while Tamora was still an incorporated village, in 1990, counted 51 people.

Tamora's principal business remains its United Farmers Cooperative grain elevator, which can load unit trains, stores about 2.3 million bushels, and has a rail siding with room for 110 cars.