Summer

Are you enjoying your summer as much as the boys in this photograph?

Luella's Lightning Shoe NSHS 13290-1

Carol Pearson was browsing an estate sale in California when she found an old shoe containing a yellowed newspaper clipping and a handwritten slip of paper. In the article, an elderly Mrs. Luella Brown of Chico, California, recalled the day in 1904 when she was struck by lightning near Lakeland, Brown County, Nebraska. The slip of paper read, “I was born in 1894. This happened 1904.”

Welcome to Marker Monday! Each Monday we will feature one of Nebraska’s hundreds of historical markers. If you’d like to see a specific marker featured, send an email to jill.dolberg@nebraska.gov. Today is Chadron State Park's 95th birthday! Read on for their Marker Monday story.

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It's Memorial Day weekend and the official start of the summer season at the Nebraska State Historical Society's numerous state historic sites. So, pack up the car and hit the trail!

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Readers of the Kearney Daily Hub on August 16, 1930, must have been startled to read that during the hot summer days, there was “Plenty of Beer to be Had in Kearney and Many Imbibe It.” State and federal prohibition then in effect should have made the claim unlikely. Yet a reporter for the Hub insisted: Advertisement from the Kearney Daily Hub of June 10, 1931 (below).

The lawn of the Nebraska State Capitol provided a resting place for Lincoln residents trying to escape the heat in July 1936. NSHS RG2183-725 (above). During the Great Depression Nebraskans became accustomed to living under trying conditions. People had to cope not only with hard economic times but with the intense heat accompanied by a drought that plagued this state and much of the rest of the country.

Chautauqua grounds near Big Blue River at Crete, ca. 1885. NSHS RG2491.PH2-91