Bellwood, NE

Bellwood is a village in Butler County, Nebraska, with 407 people at the 2020 census. Jesse D. Bell bought the land from Union Pacific in 1872, and the village was laid out in 1890 when the railroad reached the site. That sequence gives Bellwood its shape: a family-founded settlement that took on a formal grid when rail service arrived. The Gustav Rohrich Sod House, a surviving sod dwelling documented by the Library of Congress, keeps the Great Plains building story close to the village.

Education still sends people along the local rail-and-road map. Bellwood Elementary is at 612 Park Street, while high-school students travel about 11 miles to David City High School; Aquinas & St. Mary's offers another school option in David City. The village's history page frames its beginning as a family heading west in search of farmland, and the old sod house gives that settlement story a physical address. The local scoop is a Butler County village where the railroad fixed the town site and the school system still links it to David City.