Inman, Nebraska

William H. Inman and the First Settlers

Inman takes its name from William H. Inman, who built a house on the Elkhorn River in 1872. A 1940 county history calls him the first settler in Holt County of whom there is any record. When the governor appointed the county's first officers in June 1876, Inman was named county clerk, so his name appears on some of the very first county records.

The first families in the neighborhood included Inman himself along with settlers named Haynes, Grenough, Judd, Troth, Arnold and Laney, according to an 1882 history. An old newspaper obituary also remembers the Bert Smith family as among the earliest households, taking in a newcomer for his first month while he found land of his own. The same account recalls that the settlement was first known as Yorktown before it became Inman.

A Railroad Town on the Elkhorn

The town itself was born with the railroad. According to a local history once posted on this site, Albert Smith took up the original town site under the pre-emption law on November 19, 1880, and the town was platted on October 13, 1881. In 1881 the line up the Elkhorn valley was extended from Neligh toward Long Pine, and a station was placed here. Inman was platted that year. The year 1881 was a busy one: a schoolhouse was built, and Isaac Baldwin taught the first term; C. Troth opened the first store in August; and the post office was established on September 16, with Troth as the first postmaster.

Sources name the railroad differently. The 1882 Andreas history calls it the Sioux City and Pacific, while later references say the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley. Both companies were tied to the Chicago and North Western, which later absorbed them, and for most of the town's life Inman was simply a stop on the North Western. By 1895 atlases show Inman with both a post office and rail service.

Settler Life Around Inman

Families who came to the Inman neighborhood in the 1870s and 1880s found good bottomland along the Elkhorn and, a few miles south, the grassy hills and wet meadows at the edge of the Sandhills. That mix suited small farms that raised crops on the level ground and kept cattle on the grass, with hay cut from the meadows for winter. Many filed homestead or pre-emption claims, built of sod or of lumber brought in by rail, and walked or drove into the new town for mail, supplies and school.

The railroad depot was the link to the outside world. Cattle, hogs and grain went out by rail, and lumber, coal and store goods came in. By the mid-1900s the village had a lumber and hardware business, a grocery market and a school, and Inman was large enough to field a high school team that won the Holt County basketball title in 1955.

Inman Today

Like many small railroad towns on the plains, Inman has grown smaller as farms got bigger and roads improved. The census counted 315 people in 1920, 148 in 2000 and 95 in 2020. The Chicago and North Western line through town was abandoned in 1992, and the old roadbed is now part of the Cowboy Trail, which passes through on its way across northern Nebraska. U.S. Highways 20 and 275 run together past the village, linking it to O'Neill to the west and Ewing and Neligh to the east.

The village still sits where it began, on the bottomland of the Elkhorn, surrounded by the farms and pastures that drew the first settlers here.