Superior, Nebraska: Named for Better Land
Superior, Nebraska, got its name from a comparison: the land around it was judged better than other land along the railroad.
Just what it sounds like
You don’t have to dig for a hidden meaning here. In her 1925 survey of Nebraska town names, Lilian Fitzpatrick says the town “was so named because of the superior quality of the land in the vicinity as compared with other land along the railroad.” A list of Nebraska place names on the NEGenWeb site says the same thing, though it may simply be repeating Fitzpatrick.
Who picked it?
Neither of our sources names the person who chose it, and the federal place-names database only notes that Superior was platted in 1875. If you know of an early local account that names whoever picked it, we’d like to see it.
On the 1898 map
The map at the top of this page shows Superior in 1898, more than 20 years after it was platted, with several rail lines crossing the south side of town near the Kansas line. The name tells you what someone thought of the soil, and nothing about who that someone was.
Sources & further reading
- Lilian Linder Fitzpatrick, Nebraska Place-Names (University of Nebraska, 1925). A public-domain book that goes county by county through Nebraska’s town names. The “superior quality of the land.”
- NEGenWeb Online Library, Nebraska place names. The same explanation.
- GNIS feature 833952 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Superior. Platted 1875.
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