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Nebraska County Countdown Number 68: Keith County –

Home of Nebraska’s Cowboy Capital

One quick thought before we start on Keith County.

Would anybody mind if we just skipped the rest of the summer once the 4th of July hit and skipped to football season? The World Cup isn’t doing it for me and the CWS is about to end, July is a cruel month. Now that I’ve got that out of the way here’s everything I know, coming from my amateur historian roommate again, about Keith County.

Keith County was formed in 1873 and based off the 2010 national census it recorded a population of 8,368. There is some debate about who Keith County is named after, but it seems like it’s named after somebody from North Platte. There is only one official city in Keith, which is Ogallala. It is known for being the end of the major cowboy trials from Texas because cowboys would drive their cattle to the Ogallala railheads so they could ship their cattle east. The reason they did this is because cattle put on trains were up to ten times more than what they were worth in Texas. After the cattle drives, all the cowboys would spend their money on various activities such as drinking and gambling. A lot of them were shot in the streets of Ogallala, and are still buried up in Boot Hill. This is why Ogallala was coined “too tough for Texas.”

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