Editing Nemaha County, Nebraska (section)

==History==
The county forms the core of the [[Nemaha Half-Breed Reservation]] formed in the [[Fourth Treaty of Prairie du Chien]] in 1830 as land for the offspring of traders and Native Americans. The grounds of modern [[Indian Cave State Park]] mark where the county's first community, [[St. Deroin, Nebraska|Saint Deroin]], was founded in 1853 by members of the reservation as a trading post on the Missouri River. When white settlement was permitted in the [[Kansas–Nebraska Act]] of 1854, this area was part of Forney County (named for US cabinet member [[John W. Forney]]) which stretched along the Little Nemaha River from the Missouri River to west of [[Lincoln, Nebraska]]. In 1855 Nemaha County was formally founded with Brownville as its county seat. Johnson County, also founded in 1855, was initially administratively attached to Nemaha, but was organized as a stand-alone county in 1857.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}

Brownville was the biggest city in Nebraska at the time and several firsts occurred in the county including: in 1861 the first state [[normal school]] was founded at what today is [[Peru State College]]; [[Daniel Freeman]] filed the first claim under the [[Homestead Act of 1862]] for [[Homestead National Monument of America|land]] on January 1, 1863, at the Brownville land office.<ref>[http://www.nps.gov/home/historyculture/firsthomesteader.htm ''The First Homesteader''  National Park Service]</ref>

The [[Nebraska State Fair]] was held in the county at Brownville in 1870–1871.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}

In 1883 the county seat was moved to Auburn.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}

In 1974 the [[Cooper Nuclear Station]] was commissioned south of Brownville.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}