Wakefield, NE

Wakefield is a city in Dixon and Wayne counties, laid out when the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway reached the area in 1881. The town took its name from L.W. Wakefield, a railroad surveyor, and the tracks quickly made it a busy stock and grain point. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, as many as two dozen trains passed through on a day, splitting toward Wayne, Bloomfield, and the northern plains. The old depot now serves as a museum, so Wakefield's railroad story still has a front door.

Modern Wakefield runs on a different kind of throughput. Michael Foods operates an egg farm and processing plant with a large local workforce, while Central Valley Ag, schools, health care, and trucking fill out the town's work network. Baseball gives the community another claim: in 1988 Nebraska's governor named Wakefield the state's Baseball Capital, and summer still brings a heavy schedule of games. Wakefield's local scoop is the contrast between telegraph-era rail traffic and today's egg production, farm supply, and school-town life.