Lincoln, Nebraska

Lincoln, the capital of Nebraska, sits on 103.9 square miles and, as of the 2020 census, counted 291,082 residents—an estimate for 2025 puts that number at 301,522. It ranks as the state’s second-largest city and the 72nd-largest in the United States. Serving as the seat of Lancaster County, it functions as the economic and cultural hub for the Lincoln metropolitan area, which holds roughly 345,000 people. The city began in 1856 as the village of Lancaster, built on the wild salt marshes and arroyos of what would become Lancaster County.

After being renamed for President Abraham Lincoln, it was designated Nebraska’s state capital in 1869. The current capitol building, designed by Bertram G. Goodhue and finished in 1932, stands as the second-tallest state capitol in the nation. Because Lincoln is the seat of state government, both the state and federal governments are major employers here. The University of Nebraska, founded in Lincoln in 1869, is the state’s largest university with 23,954 students and ranks as the city’s third-largest employer.

Demographics

Other key employers are in service and manufacturing, including a growing high-tech sector that forms part of the region known as the Midwest Silicon Prairie. Designated a “refugee-friendly” city by the U.S. Department of State in the 1970s, Lincoln had become the 12th-largest resettlement site per capita in the country by 2000. Refugees from Vietnam, the Karen ethnic minority of Burma, Sudan, the Yazidi minority of Iraq, as well as people from Iraq, the Middle East, and Afghanistan, have settled here. During the 2025–26 school year, Lincoln Public Schools supported about 3,500 students who spoke 67 languages other than English.

Natives

Before European settlers moved westward, the prairie was covered with buffalo grass. Plains Indians—descendants of indigenous peoples who had lived in the area for thousands of years—hunted and lived along Salt Creek. The Pawnee, comprising four tribes, occupied villages along the Platte River. The Great Sioux Nation, including the Ihanktonwan and Lakota, ranged to the north and west, using Nebraska as hunting and skirmish grounds but maintaining no long-term settlements in the state.

Founding

An occasional buffalo could still be seen in Lincoln’s plat during the 1860s. Lincoln was founded in 1856 as the village of Lancaster and became the county seat of newly formed Lancaster County in 1859. The village sat on the east bank of Salt Creek. Early settlers were drawn by the abundance of salt, but after J. Sterling Morton developed salt mines in Kansas, salt was no longer a viable commodity here.

Captain W. T. Donovan, a former steamer captain, and his family settled on Salt Creek in 1856. In 1859, village settlers met to form a county; a caucus chose a committee, including Donovan, that selected Lancaster as the county seat. The county was named Lancaster. Following the 1862 Homestead Act, homesteaders began moving into the area.

The first plat was dated August 6, 1864. By the end of 1868, Lancaster had about 500 residents. The township was renamed Lincoln, and the city of Lincoln was incorporated on April 1, 1869.

State capital

That same year, the state established the University of Nebraska in Lincoln with a land grant of roughly 130,000 acres. Construction of University Hall, the university’s first building, began in 1869. Nebraska achieved statehood on March 1, 1867. The capital of the Nebraska Territory had been Omaha since the territory’s creation in 1854, but most of the population lived south of the Platte River.

After much of the territory south of the Platte was considered for annexation to Kansas, the territorial legislature voted to place the capital south of the river and as far west as possible. Before the vote to move the capital from Omaha, Omaha Senator J. N. H. Patrick made a last-ditch effort to block the move by proposing that the future capital be named after the recently assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Many people south of the Platte had sympathized with the Confederate cause during the Civil War, and senators from that region were expected to reject a measure naming the capital after Lincoln. The tactic failed, however, and the vote to move the capital south of the Platte succeeded with the passage of the Removal Act in 1867.

The Removal Act required a Capital Commission to site the capital on state-owned land. On July 18, 1867, the commission—composed of Governor David Butler, Secretary of State Thomas Kennard, and State Auditor John Gillespie—began touring sites. They chose the village of Lancaster, partly because of its salt flats and marshes. Lancaster then had about 30 residents.

Ignoring the original village plat, Kennard platted Lincoln on a larger scale. The original Lancaster plat was neither dissolved nor abandoned; it became Lincoln when the Lincoln plat files were completed on September 6, 1867. To raise money for a capitol building, an auction of lots was held. Newcomers arrived quickly, and Lincoln’s population grew.

The Nebraska State Capitol was completed on December 1, 1868—a two-story building of native limestone with a central cupola. The Kennard house, built in 1869, is the oldest remaining building from Lincoln’s original plat. In 1888, a new capitol building was constructed on the same site to replace the structurally unsound first one. This second building, a classical design by architect William H. Willcox, also developed significant structural issues that...