Gross, Nebraska

Beginnings on the Fort Randall Reserve

Fort Randall, an Army post on the Missouri in Dakota Territory, once controlled a large military reserve that reached south into what became Boyd County. After the fort closed in 1892, the government opened this land to settlers, and the town of Gross was laid out in 1893 on a quarter section near the middle of the roughly 27,000-acre Nebraska part of the reserve.

The town was first called Morton. It was renamed for Ben Gross, an early homesteader who kept a store there. For years the store and post office, and perhaps a small trading post, were the heart of the place.

Boom Years

Gross grew fast. The 1900 census counted 325 people, and local histories say the town had close to 400 by 1903 and perhaps even more the next year. There were stores, shops and several churches; local accounts mention a Methodist Episcopal church, a Church of Christ and a Christian Church, and later Free Methodist and Friends congregations. Many of the settlers on the Fort Randall lands were Czech, and during the drought of 1894 Gross families sent one of their own to Iowa and Minnesota to ask for help.

Life on the reserve land was much like homesteading elsewhere in the county: sod and frame houses, long trips for supplies, and constant worry about rain. Gross was on high ground with wide views, which made it a fine town site but a poor route for a railroad.

Bypassed by the Railroad

When the railroad was built across Boyd County in 1902, it followed the Ponca Creek valley instead of climbing the ridge to Gross. Towns with a depot, such as Bristow and Spencer, gained the stores and grain trade, and people and businesses began leaving Gross almost at once. Two fires finished much of what was left, the first burning the north side of Main Street and a second, some years later, the south side.

By 1910 the census counted 111 people, and the decline continued for decades: 23 in 1940, 8 in 1970 and only 2 in 1980. The post office, run for many years by one family, closed in 1960. A general store and later a tavern kept a little life on Main Street.

Gross was not alone. The railroad's route along Ponca Creek also passed by Baker, a nearby town that had incorporated in 1902 and built St. Joseph's Catholic Church in 1900-01; by 1916 nearly all of Baker was gone. A planned town called Kinkaid, laid out in 1901, never sold a single lot. For families farming the ridge country, these towns were where they bought supplies, collected mail and went to church, and their loss meant longer trips to Spencer or Bristow.

Gross Today

Gross never gave up its village charter. In 1976 more than 800 former residents and friends came back for a bicentennial celebration and dedicated a flagpole, and the community hall is still used for meetings and voting. The 2020 census counted just a handful of residents. The Gross Cemetery, on the hill north of town, holds burials going back to 1899 and is a good place to see the names of the families who once filled this ridge-top town.