Summer

Location: Camp Norwesca Rd, Nebraska National Forest, Chadron, Dawes County, Nebraska; 42.708256, -103.0085.

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.”

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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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Children on the ocean wave, an amusement ride in Jenner’s Park, in 1920. RG2543-4-11

From about 1900 to the early 1940s Jenner’s Zoological, Educational and Amusement Park in Loup City was a place for central Nebraska to gather, play, and learn. Brothers Henry and Robert Jenner, the founders of what was usually referred to as Jenner’s Park, were natives of England.

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. RG2183-725 (above).

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