Lamar Nebraska

Unincorporated community · Chase County · Population 28 (2020 census) · ZIP 69023 · Founded 1887 · Peak population 122 (1930)

About Lamar

Lamar is an unincorporated community of 28 (2020) in western Chase County, about 2 miles north of US 6 and about 4 miles east of the Colorado line. It was a village until its residents voted on November 5, 2024, to unincorporate; the Chase County Board made it official in December 2024, and the county now provides its services. Mail comes through the Champion post office (ZIP 69023, with Lamar an accepted name).

History

Settlers started a town called Allendale, for A. S. Allen, in 1886; it was soon renamed Lenox (also spelled Lennox), and a post office opened under that name on November 23, 1886. In 1887 the Lincoln Land Company, the Burlington's town-site company, laid out Lamar about 2 miles east, on the route of a planned line from Imperial to Holyoke, Colorado, and the post office took the name Lamar on October 31, 1887. A University of Nebraska history says the grade was built but the tracks were never laid; rails never went west of Imperial. The town was named for Lucius Q. C. Lamar, President Cleveland's Secretary of the Interior and later a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

By 1910 Lamar had two grocery stores, a bank, hardware, implement and drug stores, two livery barns, a lumberyard, a newspaper, a hotel, a resident doctor and a town band. The bank failed in 1928, and the population peaked at 122 in 1930. In the 1960s US 6 was moved 2 miles south, and the hardware store, grocery, barbershop and lumberyard closed. The post office closed in the 1990s (1995, according to Wikipedia), and the K–8 school in the early 2000s. The Scoular grain elevator and a volunteer fire hall, paid for by donations, remain.

Things to see

Scoular Grain elevator · Greenlawn Cemetery · the Colorado line, about 4 mi west