History of Blair

The Missouri River passed through a natural opening in the bluffs, known as Carter Valley , some twenty river miles north of Omaha . To take advantage of this excellent river-level crossing site, the Sioux City and Pacific Railroad routed its line to this point when surveying between Sioux City and the Union Pacific transcontinental route in 1864. Five years later, investor John I. Blair acquired the railroad, purchased 1075 acres of land about 1-1/2 miles west of the crossing and platted a town, naming it after himself. The town of Blair grew quickly – almost overnight – in the tradition of 19th Century speculative towns, and soon assumed a role as regional nexus of overland transportation.

Faced with the prospect of building an expensive and technologically untried structure to span the Missouri permanently, the SC&P skirted the problem in the 1870s by ferrying its trams aboard steamer boats. Each fall, railroad crews erected “winter bridges” – temporary timber trestles supported by driven piles – to carry the trains over the frozen river. The winter tracks broke up each year with the spring ice melt, however, and the transfer steamers had severe liabilities of their own. Time-consuming and dangerous, they were subject to interruption by downriver boat traffic and seasonal freezing and flooding. Moreover, the cumbersome transfer operations created tremendous bottlenecks during peak freighting seasons, snarling rail traffic far hours or days. For pedestrian and vehicular traffic, ferry transportation remained the only mode of crossing the river at Blair; passage came to a complete halt during the winter.

Late in 1881, the SC&P contracted with civil engineer George Morison to design a permanent bridge over the river at Blair. The relatively flat nature of the riverbanks that had benefited the ferry operation did little to help with the construction of a bridge. In this, the Blair site differed topograph­ically from those of virtually all other previous Missouri River bridges. According to Morison, the best location far a bridge over the Missouri was just below one of the great bends, especially if the current impinged on a rocky shore. Under such conditions, the bedrock beneath the river was generally shallow on the bluff side, where the main channel flowed. The least promising location was on a long, straight stretch, where the bedrock was usually found at great depth and the current veins were likely to be variable. This would make it necessary to sink excessively deep foundations, construct extensive shore protection to control the channel and erect an unnecessarily long bridge.

Blair was founded in 1869. It is favorably situated on a plateau about eighty feet above and two and a half miles from the Missouri River, and in north latitude forty-one degrees and thirty-two minutes. The original settlers upon this beautiful plateau were three brothers – Jacob, Alexander and T. M. Carter, who had located here in May, 1855.

In 1864 the Northern Nebraska Air-Line Railroad Company was organized, and in 1867 received a grant of seventy-five sections of land, which grant was transferred to the Sioux City & Pacific Railroad Company, during the same year, the company being composed of John S. Bowen and four other gentlemen. In 1868 John I. Blair and associates became owners of the franchises of the road. In June, the people of Washington County, at a special election, voted to the S. C. & P. Company, $75,000 in county bonds, and the company which had been awaiting the result of the election, immediately thereafter, under the management of John I. Blair, pushed the road across the Missouri, and built it centrally through the county, from east to west, to Fremont, reaching there before December 1, 1868. During construction of this road, speculation was rife as to the exact location of the prospective railroad town. De Soto’s hopes of being the eastern terminus of the road had been cruelly nipped in the bud by the decision of the company to cross the Missouri River three miles above where she was located, the place of this crossing of the river being determined by the existence of Carter Valley, which here runs down to the Missouri, affording a natural opening through the bluffs. Then the question of the location of the town was settled, upon the purchase by the railroad company of the three Carter brothers, named above as original settlers, and of James S. Stewart, William Temple and C. H. Beekman, of 1,075 acres of land; this land being the present site of Blair, and the offering of this land for sale, in lots at public auction. This sale took place on the 10th of March, 1869, and lots to the aggregate value of $61,000 were sold that day, the highest price paid for any one lot being $350.

This sale was conducted ostensibly by the Railroad Company, but in reality John I. Blair purchased the whole tract of the original settlers; it was he who sold the lots, and it was he in whose honor the town was named. From this time the future of the town of Blair seemed assured, and ever since she has experienced a healthy growth. Business men and many people from other less favored towns in the county, as well as strangers from outside the State, hastened to Blair. In 1869 the county seat was removed here from Fort Calhoun.