Communities

Oketo

Oketo, smallest of Marshall County's incorporated towns, today maintains a lively community with residents who value their heritage. The town's earliest buildings are part of the Community Museum, along with the remnants of a gravity-flow elevator that carried grain downhill. A 1952 David Manrose painting that hangs in the county's Historic Courthouse Museum depicts the town along the Big Blue River in its earliest days.

Irving Chapman established a grist and saw mill on the river there in 1867. In 1876 they started to quarry limestone rock for buildings. In 1879 the railroad was built from Marysville to Beatrice. In 1881 the town was platted on the hill.

Z.H. Moore built the first rock store on the hill in 1884; it is now the Oketo Museum. Moore opened a bank in 1889 and built the present stone building in 1890. The building is now the Oketo Bank Museum.

The Oketo Bank Museum now has some of the original fixtures back in the bank. Prebyl Antiques stores antiques in the former Root & Hedge store, C.M. DeLain Hardware and Abe Eley’s farm Equipment buildings.

The Methodist Church was built in 1888 and dedicated in February in 1889. The wooden school was built in 1886 and replaced with a new brick one in 1908. The first two year high school class graduated in 1895 and the first four year class in 1916. The school closed in 1976.

The Overland Stage Company built the Overland Stage Trail, a cut-off from Seneca through this country about a half mile south of the present sight of Oketo which joined the old trail between Odell and Spring Creek in 1859. As early as that year there was a trading post here named Oketo. (The name being taken from the name of an Otoe Indian chief Arkateth). A ferry had been established about a quarter of a mile below where the old bridge now stands. The trail can still be seen and the emigrant trains going to California gold fields used to cross the river here.

The museum is open by appointment by calling Kent Obermeyer at 785.744.3497 or Bill Hellmer at 785.744.3245.