Wood Lake, NE

Wood Lake began as a railroad-and-timber settlement. The Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad reached Cherry County in 1882, and the village took its name from trees around a nearby lake that supplied valuable timber. Today Wood Lake is one of the villages listed by Cherry County, Nebraska's largest county by land area. Students are part of Valentine Community Schools, with Valentine High School serving as the district's comprehensive high school. The district also operates rural attendance centers across the Sandhills, showing the distances that connect Wood Lake to its educational center. The old railroad origin and the present school route still place the village within Cherry County's Sandhills geography.