About NSHS

The Nebraska State Historical Society was founded in 1878 by citizens who recognized Nebraska was going through great changes and they sought to record the stories of both indigenous and immigrant peoples. It was designated a state institution and began receiving funds from the legislature in 1883. Legislation in 1994 changed NSHS from a state institution to a state agency. The division is headed by Director Daryl Bohac. They are assisted by an administrative staff responsible for financial and personnel functions, museum store services, security, and facilities maintenance for NSHS.

Explore Nebraska

Discover the real places and people of our past at these NSHS sites.

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The work we do to discover, preserve, and share Nebraska's history wouldn't be possible without the support of NSHS members.

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Learn more about the educational programs provided at our museums, sites, and online.

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Find games, lists, and more to enhance your history education curriculum.

Latest Hall of Fame Inductee

The Nebraska Hall of Fame was established in 1961 to officially recognize prominent Nebraskans.

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NSHS's mission is to collect, preserve, and open our shared history to all Nebraskans.

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NSHS's Research and Reference Services help connect you to the material we collect and preserve.

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Make a cash donation to help us acquire, preserve, and interpret Nebraska’s history. Gifts to the Nebraska State Historical Society help leave a legacy and may help your taxes, too! Support the work of NSHS.

Volunteers are the heroes of NSHS. So much history, so little time! Your work helps us share access to Nebraska’s stories at our museums and sites, the reference room, and online.

publications

Keeley Cure

Nebraska newspapers from the late nineteenth century include numerous advertisements for local Keeley hospitals or treatment centers for patients addicted to alcohol, nicotine, and narcotic drugs. Dr. Leslie E. Keeley opened the first Keeley Institute in Dwight, Illinois, in 1879. It relied heavily on injections of “bichloride” or “double chloride” of gold, from which its treatment for alcoholism became known as the “Gold Cure.” By the 1890s every state and nearly every county had a Keeley institute where this cure could work its reputed wonders for the addicted. In Nebraska, Lincoln, Blair, O’Neill, North Platte, Beatrice, and Fremont (among others) had institutes.



By 1900, however, it was largely discredited. The Nebraska State Journal of Lincoln on February 28, 1900, editorialized briefly on the passing of what had come to be considered a hoax. “The medical profession generally attributes the cure of drunkenness devised by the late Dr. Keeley to the imagination of the patients. They claim that his method was pure quackery, that there was absolutely no therapeutical effect from injections of the alleged ‘chloride of gold,’ but that his treatment was purely of the mind, one of the branches of ‘faith cure’ or healing by laying on of hands.”



The Keeley cure, however, did have some initial success. At one time over two hundred treatment centers existed. Patients who recovered from their addictions were honored as “graduates” and urged to promote the treatment that had helped them. Dr. Keeley encouraged what would today be called group therapy for his patients, a factor that may have been more important to their recovery than injections. The State Journal observed: “One important item of the doctor’s method was the hint that was always given in one way or another, to the patient, that if he resumed his drinking habit after being discharged ‘cured,’ it would be at a very great risk.”



“At any rate,” concluded the newspaper, “after having a great vogue and bringing much money into the purse of the inventor of the ‘cure,’ the fad gradually died away and the various establishments where the hocus pocus had been conducted with so much seriousness, were closed one after another until the ‘gold cure’ is a reminiscence.”



Despite the modern assumption that Keeley’s cure was merely a successful example of nineteenth century quackery, Dr. Keeley is remembered as one of the first to treat alcoholism as a medical (as well as a social) problem. 

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Other Publications

The Bachelors’ Protective Union of Kearney

When the Bachelors' Protective Union gave a gala reception for two of its newly married, former members and their brides in March of 1890, the social club for young, ...

U.S. Weather Bureau in 1890s Nebraska

The U.S. Weather Bureau was established by an act of Congress on October 1, 1890. It took over the weather service that had been established in the office of the Chief ...

Canning the Way to Victory

During American participation in World War I the U.S. Food Administration, under the direction of Herbert Hoover, launched a massive campaign to persuade Americans to ...

The Shoemaker’s Ashes

"Edward Kuehl, one of the most peculiar characters that ever lived in Omaha, or anywhere else, was found dead in his bed last night in the back room of his place of ...

Crazy Horse Surrender Ledger Foreward

Red Dog, an Oglala Lakota who lived at the Red Cloud Agency, Nebraska, 1876-77 (Nebraska State Historical Society RG2955.ph).   In the summer of 1876, following the ...

Darryl F. Zanuck

Darryl F. Zanuck Darryl F. Zanuck (1902-1979), a native Nebraskan, produced some of Hollywood's most important and controversial films. He helped found 20th Century Fox ...

The Burlington’s Profitable Pork Special

Nebraska railroads were much concerned with developing an adequate economy in the areas they served. The Burlington, for example, had a long history of caring for the ...

Bungalow Filling Stations

After the giant Standard Oil Company was broken into thirty-four separate companies in 1911, the newly independent Standard Oil of Nebraska dominated the state's market ...

The Bull Fight

This is the perfect time of year for a visit to the old fishin' hole. But a group of fisherfolk from Plainview discovered that this bucolic pastime sometimes has ...

Buffalo Soldiers West

African-American soldiers on the western frontier are the focus of an exhibit at the Nebraska History Museum in Lincoln. Buffalo Soldiers West, on loan from the Colorado ...

Protection for Buffalo

The extermination of the buffalo on the Plains occurred largely between 1870 and 1885. The Nebraska State Journal of Lincoln on February 1, 1874, editorialized in vain ...

Buffalo Hunting

In late October 1877 young Rolf Johnson and three friends left their homes in Phelps County, Nebraska, for a buffalo hunt in northeastern Colorado. The hunt was not very ...
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