Nebraska

Flat water

Nebraska is named for the Platte River. The Omaha and Otoe peoples called it by words meaning “flat water,” because the river is wide and shallow: a 1925 University of Nebraska study gives the Omaha form as Nibthaska, from ni, water, and bthaska, flat, and the Otoe form as Nibrathka. The Platte itself is now an official state symbol. Too shallow for boats, it runs about 310 miles east from the city of North Platte to the Missouri, and its valley carried the Oregon, Mormon and California trails, the Pony Express, the Union Pacific Railroad and today Interstate 80.

Statehood over a veto

Nebraska Territory was organized in 1854, and its first legislature met in Omaha in January 1855. In 1866 Congress passed a bill to admit Nebraska as a state, but President Andrew Johnson vetoed it. In February 1867 Congress overrode the veto, and Nebraska entered the Union as the 37th state on March 1, 1867. It is the only state ever admitted over a presidential veto, and the date is still written on the rim of the Great Seal.

Equality before the law

The young state chose its motto almost at once. In June 1867 Governor David Butler signed the law creating the Great Seal, with the motto “Equality Before the Law” across the top. The next day, in its first vote on a constitutional amendment as a state, Nebraska ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees all citizens the equal protection of the laws.

A new capital on the prairie

Omaha had been the capital since territorial days, but its choice had been bitterly disputed, and lawmakers wanted a capital that was easier to reach from the whole state rather than one on its eastern edge. An act of June 14, 1867, told the governor, the secretary of state and the auditor to choose a site. They settled on the small village of Lancaster, south of the Platte River, renamed it Lincoln, and planned it as the home of the state university, penitentiary and hospital as well. The government moved there in December 1868. Lincoln’s Capitol, finished in 1932, broke with the domed tradition: it is a 400-foot tower topped by a bronze sower. The capital page tells the story.

Cornhuskers and tree planters

Nebraska’s official nickname has changed once. From 1895 it was the Tree Planters’ State, honoring settlers’ windbreaks and orchards and J. Sterling Morton, who founded Arbor Day in 1872. In 1945 the Legislature replaced it with the Cornhusker State, after the University of Nebraska’s teams, named for the work of husking corn by hand.

The state flag is the Great Seal in gold and silver on a blue field. The seal shows a steamboat on the Missouri, a blacksmith, a settler’s cabin with wheat and corn, and a train heading west toward the Rocky Mountains.

Meadowlarks, goldenrod and mammoths

Nebraska has 28 official state symbols. The goldenrod became the state flower in 1895 and the western meadowlark the state bird in 1929. The cottonwood, which settlers often carried as shoots to plant on their claims, replaced the American elm as state tree in 1972. The state fossil is the mammoth, whose remains have turned up in most of Nebraska’s counties. Since a 1997 law allowed the governor to designate symbols, Nebraska has added honors for the square dance, milk, the channel catfish, two baseball capitals and the Platte River. The state song is “Beautiful Nebraska.” See them all on the Nebraska symbols page.

Land and people

Nebraska covers 77,348 square miles, 16th among the states, and had about 2.02 million residents in 2025, 38th in the country and up from 2020. It borders six states: South Dakota to the north, Iowa and Missouri to the east, Kansas to the south, and Colorado and Wyoming to the west. Omaha, with about 489,000 people, is the largest city, followed by Lincoln with about 302,000, Bellevue, Grand Island and Kearney.