Parks Nebraska

Unincorporated community · Dundy County · Population 12 (2020 census) · ZIP 69041 · Founded 1882

About Parks

Parks is an unincorporated community of 12 (a census-designated place) in southern Dundy County, on local roads just north of US 34, about 10 miles west of Benkelman (12 by road). Rock Creek Lake State Recreation Area and the Rock Creek State Fish Hatchery are a few miles northwest.

History

The Burlington named its station here Parks for a surveyor named Parks (Frank Parks according to Wikipedia; S. B. Parks of the 1867 government survey according to other lists). The post office, opened in the 1880s, was called Ives, for D. O. Ives, manager of the Oak Cattle Co.; in 1886 twenty wagonloads of Iowa homesteaders reached Ives in a single day, and a church was organized that year. The 1890 gazetteer still listed Ives as a post office 12 miles west of Benkelman. Ives was one of the towns that challenged Benkelman for the county seat in 1888, and the post office finally took the railroad's name, Parks, in 1904.

Rock Creek, fed by some of the largest and coldest springs in Nebraska, runs past Parks to the Republican. A private trout hatchery at its head began about 1913; the state bought it in 1924, and it now raises nearly half the trout stocked in Nebraska.

Things to see

Rock Creek Lake State Recreation Area, a 50-acre spring-fed no-wake lake with rainbow trout stocked seasonally, catfish, bass and perch, a ramp and 23 primitive campsites (no drinking water; pay in cash or check at the iron ranger) · the Rock Creek State Fish Hatchery, about 2 mi north of the lake, open to visitors daily 8 a.m.–4 p.m. Mountain Time · the Texas Trail Canyon marker, about 7 mi west on US 34