Ames Nebraska

Unincorporated community · Dodge County · Population 14 (2020 census) · 1885

About Ames

Ames is an unincorporated community and census place of 14 on US 30 and the Union Pacific, about 7 miles west of Fremont. Little remains of the company town that once stood here.

History

John Farnsworth platted Timberville nearby in 1857. The Union Pacific station here was first called Ketchum; the Ames post office opened in 1885, probably named for Oakes Ames of the Union Pacific. In January 1886, after hard winters on its western ranges, the Standard Cattle Company bought about 5,000 acres here (later 6,300) and built a company town: two half-mile streets of about 80 houses, offices, a school, a store with a 500-seat hall and a barn covering about 4 acres that could hold 3,008 cattle or 16,000 sheep. The company paid above market for local corn and shipped tens of thousands of cattle a year.

The University of Nebraska ran sugar-beet trials on the Standard farm from about 1898, and the Standard Beet Sugar Company factory operated at Leavitt, about a mile west, from 1899 to 1906 before it was moved to Scottsbluff in 1910. In 1904 new owners bought much of the property, and in 1911 a "new" Ames was laid out north of the tracks. The 1949 co-op elevator was torn down on October 24, 2015.