Curtis, NE

Curtis is a Frontier County city in Nebraska’s Medicine Creek Valley, with 806 residents in the 2020 census. Nebraska Highway 23 runs through town, and the city’s origin is bound to the High-Line railroad. The Nebraska and Colorado Railroad reached Curtis on October 6, 1885; the town was established in 1886, incorporated as a village in 1887, and grew into a rail division with a roundhouse and machine shop. The city’s name came from a trapper who worked in the area.

Curtis now has an unusual combination of school and college life for a town its size. The Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture, part of the University of Nebraska, occupies the agricultural-school tradition that brought classes here in 1912 and later became a technical college. Medicine Valley Schools serve local K–12 students, while the city’s annual Easter Pageant and Hometown Christmas fill Center Avenue and the high-school stage with volunteer activity. Lakes lie within a short drive, and hunting and fishing are part of the surrounding country. Curtis is a railroad-born agricultural town that kept education at its center.