Hershey, NE

Hershey is a Lincoln County village on the Union Pacific Railroad's Overland Route west of North Platte. It began as a station named for pioneer settler J. H. Hershey, and the first town plat covered only twenty-four lots in two square blocks. That small railroad beginning placed Hershey in the middle of the Platte Valley's larger pattern of farms, irrigation, freight, and settlement.

Today, North Platte handles many countywide services and larger trips, while Hershey remains tied to the Union Pacific line and the surrounding agricultural country. The village's location gives it a clear relationship to the railroad: trains move through the broader landscape, fields stretch around the town, and local roads connect residents with the river valley and nearby communities. Hershey is a small Nebraska place with a railroad name, a compact original grid, and a daily life shaped by the wide open country around it. The village's name belongs to the railroad era, when a station and a few blocks could set the course of a whole community.