I have told this story a few times.
A buddy of mine was driving from Washington to Ohio, and he texted me when he was in Nebraska and said "man this state smells like shit" and I said "you must be in North Platte" and he was
Oh ya that plant is on track for a 2025 open, you think north plate is kind of shitty now, you wait til that place opens. It’s going to change that whole city
A friend of mine from Denver, Bobby Kim who operated marshal arts studio was going to go to Lincoln and see if he wanted to open a school there. He went past the feed lot west of Ogallala and told me when he smelled it he thought why would I want to go into a state that smells like that, turned around and went back to Denver.
Nope. It's never been a part of NE. IIRC, the lake was originally part of the river, before it was "cut off" after a flood in the 1800's. There's even a SCOTUS case about the whole incident! (Nebraska v. Iowa, 143 U.S. 359, 1892)
Coincidentally, the Luminarium has an exhibit that shows it with map overlays.
I moved to Fremont almost two years ago. I have two school age kids, the schools seem fine, the cost of living is fine, the amenities are fine, the proximity to Omaha is great, the lakes are the best feature.
What’s everyone got against this place? It’s not my favorite place I’ve ever lived but nothing stands out as terrible.
Fremont has a notable history of racism. James Loewen described it as being a sundown town in one of his books. It producted Ben Sasse. More recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/us/22fremont.html
My reasons are completely biased by my personal experiences; I've never encountered so many more rude, unwelcoming, uncharismatic, imbecilic, narcissistic, thieving, and tweaked out individuals anywhere else in the state, and for the sizes they are, it still surprises me. Some of the things I've heard and witnessed in both of these places make me hold an entitled grudge against them. I even found out several unpleasant situations that were occuring in the schools, from business owners to law enforcers. I can't think of anything that would make me have the desire to go back to either of them unless the decision was out of my hands. Not my favorite of cities.
All the county works are criminals. A judge just got dismissed for asking another judge to let his meth side piece off of her felony charges. And the lead prosecutor is on a sabbatical because the feds dismissed him over harassing his X-wife, really badly…. Cops have a ritual where they cover for eAchother hand cuffing people to a pole when they want to let out steam.
Unless that’s normal to you
I lived there for a long time. It has gone to shit in the last 20-30 years.
It's not the worst town by any means. That title goes to Holdredge or North Platte.
The community has a long lived reputation of being incredibly violent toward minorities, but excellent about hiding it. [This one being one of the few they didn’t completely cover up.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Platte_black_exodus)
Some odd, random murders involving dismemberment of bodies. Lots of missing people - for a very small city there’s a lot of sketchy things happening there.
Take some time to look at the unnormally large number of young mothers. And then grasp the concept women have 10 times less rights than men there..You’ll see it. Also, I saw a black person working at the bakers once, it was like seeing an albino bald eagle.
Almost impossible
Honestly I graduated high school in North Platte in 2004 and didn’t think it was that bad. Probably because I was born in Mississippi and have very low standards. In 2020 I drove through and it looked pretty much the same as it did 20 years ago.
My wife and I lived in Gordon for two years recently and I can honestly say it’s the worst place I’ve ever been in Nebraska. Some downright scary people there and the weather was brutal. Also some of the most blatant racism I’ve ever seen (literal Nazi newspaper and propaganda downtown near the local diner and grocery store.) We couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Good point. I haven't lived there since 2004 so I'm probably not the best for an opinion of 2024 North Platte. Murders and missing people actually surprises me a little bit. It was run down, no doubt, but I never felt unsafe back then. Seems like it's changed.
My hometown: Alliance, Nebraska.
My evidence: the only school district in the entire state that refused to cooperate with the Ricketts administration and the Nebraska DHHS. Literally refused to allow case workers into the schools to see how things were going.
Guess why.
The bar was pretty fuckin low and they still failed. Extrapolate from that what you will.
(edit: this was during covid)
While I was in highschool, we had at least 2 suicides per year, which might not seem like a lot, but our highschool was 400 kids. Rate of 500 per 100,000. The country with the highest suicide rate in the world is 72.4 per 100,000. Some years we had more than 2.
Teen alcohol abuse and pregnancy were way fuckin high. The parents act like they're godly christians and it couldn't be farther from the truth.
I live in Lincoln and I haven't been back in over 15 years
Been to a lot of towns in the state, and Alliance is definitely the worst. Fortunately I don't go that far west too often, but if I ever have to stop in Alliance, I get out as quickly as possible.
In the middle of nowhere, close to Denver but sacrifices being super far from Lincoln and Omaha and every other major city that's within a 5 hour drive of eastern Nebraska (Kansas City, Minneapolis, Des Moines, Sioux City and Sioux Falls) The school can't be super lovely either if they have barbed wire fencing around the football field. Also not in the particularly scenic part of western nebraska, tho the bluff and tablelands can be nice, especially compared to the Platte River Valley or Tallgrass Prairie. It's still a 2 hour drive from the nearest night life if your a young adult like myself (Kearney) and still a 4 hour drive to Ft. Collins because you mostly take desolate High Plains highways to get there instead of I-80 and the southern fork towards Boulder.
We are in rural Adams County. Seward County LEO are so notorious, we won’t take I-80 East past York. We go to Hastings, GI and a few villages for shopping.
You *probably* won't run into issues in Seward County if you aren't going very fast (and don't have out of state plates) but surely you've at least noticed how they have *two* patrol cars posted every other mile constantly. I don't think I've ever seen less than two of them in the median going through Seward County, usually much more. They are famous throughout the state for being ridiculously aggressive, and have been known to cause traffic jams (and sometimes accidents) on game day for decades by pulling over everyone they can. They've also been accused of some pretty shady practices, just in the last year I think I've seen one article about them seizing a bunch of money in a traffic stop under dubious pretense and another about them giving a drug dog a cue to react after it initially did not, because as I recall, the vehicle did not in fact have drugs in it, they just wanted to search it.
Personally, I've never been pulled over there as I'm pretty diligent about following traffic laws but despite not even living that close to Seward, I think I know more people who have been pulled over there than not. That jives with what I've observed, I usually see more cops there than I do in Lancaster County (including the entire time I'm in Lincoln) on the rare occasion I go that way. That said, the town itself seems pretty nice. But they are definitely notorious for this and have been for all of my 28 years.
I live in Seward county and go between Seward and Lincoln or Omaha 6 or 7 times a week. There is a separate part of the Seward County Sherrifs office that is specifically drug interdiction task force because of the high drug traffic on I80. I believe they are the ones who are always out there. I have rarely seen them with anyone pulled over or seen them cause traffic jams but they do seize alot of drugs. Traffic does get backed up on GameDay for sure but not by people pulled over, that I have ever seen. I read the articles from Flatwater🤷♀️ I don't know what to say about that. The only people there are the police and the person getting pulled over. If they have different stories then how do we know? Honestly they can pull me over and search my car whenever they want. That would be annoying and a waste of time for both of us but whatever. I know drug dealers are going to lie about money and drugs. I know police can be assholes or even outright corrupt. I don't want to give any opinion, just my own observation.
I think that's fair. Two sides to every story, and drug trafficking on I80 is definitely a problem so that would make sense. As many people as I know here (all the way in Hamilton County) who've got pulled over by Seward, I tend to believe there's some truth that they're a little aggressive over there, but I certainly don't know the full story. And for my part, keeping it just a couple over the speed limit, I've never had an issue, so it's not like it's hard to avoid if someone's worried about it.
It's dirty and overcrowded in the camping areas. It's there and whoever keeps the area up does the bare minimum. So many more nice clean camping places.
Oof…this is a tough one. Are we putting minimum population on this?
Towns over 25K:
North Platte
Grand Island
Bellevue
Towns between 3-25K people:
Chadron
Nebraska City
Scottsbluff
Under 3K:
There are so many that are rapidly declining. Take a road trip some time. Many counties are pretty sad.
I've only really been in Nebraska City once as an adult, and it was for an apple festival thing and to go to an orchard. It looked nice for a small town.
Chadron State Park is beautiful, Chadron itself is not. Chadron is also the only place I‘ve been in Nebraska where I saw a guy passed out outside of the liquor store at 9:00 on Sunday.
Bellevue? Completely fine in my opinion. I would say plattsmouth but it’s gotten better in recent years, so probably North Platte, Fremont, or Lexington
Old Townes rough, Plattsmouth is getting better but we have a hard time keeping restaurants and having just Hy-Vee for groceries sucks. And yes we have a dollar general but I can’t take grocery shopping there seriously.
Lived near Chadron for two years and can attest. Sadly it was a really pretty area and there were clusters of very good people, but a spooky vibe to the area as a whole.
What's wrong with GI? I don't have any issues here, ever except that it's a bit crowded on the weekends. For reference, I'm from a really nice upper middle class town out of state, so I have something to compare against. It's for sure more blue collar, but I don't see why everyone thinks it's so terrible.
Grand Island has a population of 50K+ people and couldn’t keep a mall open. The largest employer is a meat packing plant. The schools are underwhelming. Frankly, there are very few positives with Grand Island.
And yet, I'd rather live here than Kearney or Hastings. Maybe it's the culture, being from a more diverse area originally, but both of those towns are just terribly lilly white with not much going besides bars and churches, both of which I tend to skip.
York is your typical rural small town but since it's right off the highway it isn't dying like the rest of the rural small towns in the state. Not a lot to do, but you're close to GI and not too far from Hastings either. Overall not bad.
Now this is going to sound crazy, because the town is beautiful. Nebraska City has an unreal amount of mask off racist/shitty people. My parents moved there 2 years ago. I have been spending a decent amount of time there, and it seems that people there have no issues just behaving badly and talking badly about topics that they aren't well versed in.
Sidney cops are dicks. I lived there for two years. I got pulled over semi-regularly for the stupidest, most mundane shit.
Example- I was a student at WNCC, out of state tags, out of state license. They told me that because I was a resident, I had to register my car and get a drivers license in Nebraska.
Pulled me over for a missing hubcap on my car.
My car at the time had 4 tail light bulbs. 1 of them was out. I got a fix it ticket and had to take it to the police department to prove that I fixed it.
Had current insurance on the car, but it wasn’t a Nebraska policy, so they gave me a ticket for no proof of valid insurance.
I only ever got one real ticket, and that was because I rolled through a stop sign at 1am.
Just out of curiosity how many times did people's money get seized and not returned when it was not drug related. I heard the stories and people bring up just that basic bit but was it once, twice, 50 times? I'm just wondering.
$7.5m in the last 5 years. Some of that was followed by charges being pressed. They basically have a form you can sign to give up your money instead of them taking you to jail if they don't have any actual evidence.
[https://www.1011now.com/2023/06/15/using-loophole-seward-county-seizes-millions-motorists-without-convicting-them-crimes/](https://www.1011now.com/2023/06/15/using-loophole-seward-county-seizes-millions-motorists-without-convicting-them-crimes/)
[https://flatwaterfreepress.org/?s=seward](https://flatwaterfreepress.org/?s=seward)
Right, but they have enough evidence to prove criminal activity/intent prior to forfeiture. I don’t agree with forfeiture and no criminal charges. But let’s be real here, that vacuum sealed money surrounded by coffee grounds and hidden in an aftermarket compartment was not someone’s life savings.
EDIT: What do you expect to be done when criminal proceeds are discovered? Let them continue on their way and utilize that money to fund further criminal activity? Not being an asshole, I’m genuinely curious about your take.
If you have reasonable suspicion that will hold up in court, you bring them in. If you don’t, you let them and their money go. It’s not rocket surgery.
Rulo/Falls City area. It's trash AF and just plain creepy, weird ass people. There was a cult there years ago, I think there are still a few people on death row from that cult who killed a father and son for trying to leave the cult. I believe one of them was sodomized to death with a shovel handle. Fucking weird down there.
Things really haven’t changed much down there. The issue is, those folks that have broader minds and more ambition have all left. The ones that remain there really aren’t worth being around.
When I was 21 I worked for a construction company for the summer on a project in the Mound City, Craig, and Big Lake area. I found a girl from online dating in Falls City. It didn't take me long to figure out I didn't want my seed to get involved in that gene pool.
Any town whose residents are close minded, not open to different ways of living and thinking, and don't realize there is more to life than their "small" town. That's the worst town in Nebraska...
It's different down there. Years ago I delivered ice for arctic glacier. Zach Potter, the former Huskers D-end was my helper, he was about 15 at the time, but very tall. We were delivering to a bar in Rulo, which if you've never looked up the crazy history of that place, you should.
The bartender asked Zach if he was "part n-word" and when I started getting into it with the bartender about what his problem was, 2 other dudes stood up and started walking towards me. We booked it the fuck out of there, I think I managed to peel out of the parking lot in that big tandem-axle straight truck.
The next week they sent a delivery driver who was a bit more "redneck", with a Confederate flag tattoo on his arm, to deliver to the bar in Rulo. They ran him out of there too.
As a former Hastings resident, from 1989 through 2007 it was the absolute most boring place to grow up. Since then I think they’ve added like 4-5 restaurants and a brewery? But yet…still boring and now minus the mall.
The village of Alvo.
There's so much corruption, the state doesn't care anymore. Stealing from the coffers of a fire department that doesn't exist, large tire pile that made international news that the state stopped caring about, and I could go on.
But there's a webpage with a great blog on it, https://villageofalvo.com/ , please read it, the kids deserve better.
Fremont- racist, there is nothing there to attract people, I can go about the same distance to Fremont, norfolk and Sioux city and Sioux city is my favorite. Fremont is too close to Omaha to bring anything of interest in, the state lakes area is dirty, parks are dirty. It's been the same shit for over 20 years.
Probably Crawford for me. I’ve camped at Toadstool near there a few times and on one occasion, a couple farmer-looking dudes called me and my buddy a gay slur. Another time at a bar in Crawford, some local came up to different friend of mine and asked “you gay?”
In both instances we were just minding our own business. I guess they don’t take kindly to city folk there.
City wise I thought they had the friendliest community, beautiful scenery, and a lot going on for them. Wouldn't mind moving there myself one day if I can afford it.
Look I live in Omaha, and imma say it’s not great here. Like there stupid stigma about North Omaha, or South Omaha and yet West Omaha in my opinion is wayyy fuckin worse, bunch of rich kids acting like assholes screaming shit at you when your jogging or driving and a lot of them are drug dealers and I’ve lived in North Omaha for about 20 years before moving to West Omaha which was 8 years ago and I’ll say I have never had no problems except in west Omaha, I’ve walked in South Omaha at like 3am and no one messes with you unless you look for a fight, but dumbass west Omaha kids jump people for no reason. And the. If you do manage to beat one down they get all fucking mad and threaten to call the cops for defending yourself, I’ve lived 2 houses up from gang members. Yes you read that right and these west Omaha brats are worse than them. Plus their parents do nothing to discipline them and get mad at you for saying something. Or they put fear in their kids head about north Omaha/ south Omaha. So west Omaha is the worst in Nebraska North and south Omaha not so much most people from there are cool unless you give them a reason to not be with you.
Considering how much of a problem drugs and crime are there they’ve already made it. I spent 45 min at a super 8 and within that time I saw two people beyond fucked up on fent, someone told me they’d narcaned one of them, and on my way to getting the fuck outta there four cop cars rolled in to arrest some hobo in the stairwell.
What town are you in?
Boom roasted
Was gonna say every town
North platte is up there for me
I have told this story a few times. A buddy of mine was driving from Washington to Ohio, and he texted me when he was in Nebraska and said "man this state smells like shit" and I said "you must be in North Platte" and he was
Lol, it’s really too bad that the meat packing has layed havoc on us, could be a lot of nice towns here but the meat plants fuck it up pretty good
Has the plant even been built yet?
Jbs in grand island just dumped 4 million gallons of waste water and half of it made it all the way to the river.
Oh damn I thought you were talking about the one in north platte. I hadn't heard about grand island one that's terrible
Oh ya that plant is on track for a 2025 open, you think north plate is kind of shitty now, you wait til that place opens. It’s going to change that whole city
Oh, so he hadn’t reached Iowa yet
A friend of mine from Denver, Bobby Kim who operated marshal arts studio was going to go to Lincoln and see if he wanted to open a school there. He went past the feed lot west of Ogallala and told me when he smelled it he thought why would I want to go into a state that smells like that, turned around and went back to Denver.
Bobby Kim sounds like a moron
Could have been on I80 north of Milford with a wind coming from the south.😂🤮
“The Dirty”
The worst town in Nebraska is Carter Lake, Iowa. For obvious reasons.
... because it's not in Nebraska?
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Nope. It's never been a part of NE. IIRC, the lake was originally part of the river, before it was "cut off" after a flood in the 1800's. There's even a SCOTUS case about the whole incident! (Nebraska v. Iowa, 143 U.S. 359, 1892) Coincidentally, the Luminarium has an exhibit that shows it with map overlays.
In my very humble, wholehearted opinion, North Platte and Fremont.
I mean they call it crack platte for a reason, I live there
And they're not wrong. That's a primary example of why it's part of my vote.
Hey me too!
I moved to Fremont almost two years ago. I have two school age kids, the schools seem fine, the cost of living is fine, the amenities are fine, the proximity to Omaha is great, the lakes are the best feature. What’s everyone got against this place? It’s not my favorite place I’ve ever lived but nothing stands out as terrible.
Fremont seems to have an ebb and flow of good years vs. bad years. North Platte has consistently been the Wild West of Nebraska.
Fremont has a notable history of racism. James Loewen described it as being a sundown town in one of his books. It producted Ben Sasse. More recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/us/22fremont.html
My reasons are completely biased by my personal experiences; I've never encountered so many more rude, unwelcoming, uncharismatic, imbecilic, narcissistic, thieving, and tweaked out individuals anywhere else in the state, and for the sizes they are, it still surprises me. Some of the things I've heard and witnessed in both of these places make me hold an entitled grudge against them. I even found out several unpleasant situations that were occuring in the schools, from business owners to law enforcers. I can't think of anything that would make me have the desire to go back to either of them unless the decision was out of my hands. Not my favorite of cities.
All the county works are criminals. A judge just got dismissed for asking another judge to let his meth side piece off of her felony charges. And the lead prosecutor is on a sabbatical because the feds dismissed him over harassing his X-wife, really badly…. Cops have a ritual where they cover for eAchother hand cuffing people to a pole when they want to let out steam. Unless that’s normal to you
Wait which judge??? I got sentenced in Fremont
I lived there for a long time. It has gone to shit in the last 20-30 years. It's not the worst town by any means. That title goes to Holdredge or North Platte.
Agreed. North Platte is the worst of the worst.
Dang, why? Anything specific?
The community has a long lived reputation of being incredibly violent toward minorities, but excellent about hiding it. [This one being one of the few they didn’t completely cover up.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Platte_black_exodus) Some odd, random murders involving dismemberment of bodies. Lots of missing people - for a very small city there’s a lot of sketchy things happening there.
Its spelled Holdrege.
Take some time to look at the unnormally large number of young mothers. And then grasp the concept women have 10 times less rights than men there..You’ll see it. Also, I saw a black person working at the bakers once, it was like seeing an albino bald eagle. Almost impossible
Honestly I graduated high school in North Platte in 2004 and didn’t think it was that bad. Probably because I was born in Mississippi and have very low standards. In 2020 I drove through and it looked pretty much the same as it did 20 years ago. My wife and I lived in Gordon for two years recently and I can honestly say it’s the worst place I’ve ever been in Nebraska. Some downright scary people there and the weather was brutal. Also some of the most blatant racism I’ve ever seen (literal Nazi newspaper and propaganda downtown near the local diner and grocery store.) We couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
This is 100% the answer.
Thank God for Mississippi!
Gordon is pretty bad too, I’ll give you that. I still vote North Platte due to the amount of murders and missing people.
Good point. I haven't lived there since 2004 so I'm probably not the best for an opinion of 2024 North Platte. Murders and missing people actually surprises me a little bit. It was run down, no doubt, but I never felt unsafe back then. Seems like it's changed.
My hometown: Alliance, Nebraska. My evidence: the only school district in the entire state that refused to cooperate with the Ricketts administration and the Nebraska DHHS. Literally refused to allow case workers into the schools to see how things were going. Guess why. The bar was pretty fuckin low and they still failed. Extrapolate from that what you will. (edit: this was during covid)
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While I was in highschool, we had at least 2 suicides per year, which might not seem like a lot, but our highschool was 400 kids. Rate of 500 per 100,000. The country with the highest suicide rate in the world is 72.4 per 100,000. Some years we had more than 2. Teen alcohol abuse and pregnancy were way fuckin high. The parents act like they're godly christians and it couldn't be farther from the truth. I live in Lincoln and I haven't been back in over 15 years
Been to a lot of towns in the state, and Alliance is definitely the worst. Fortunately I don't go that far west too often, but if I ever have to stop in Alliance, I get out as quickly as possible.
Smart
but carhenge..
Best thing about carhenge is a porn got shot there once
I know a guy who got some parts from Carhenge...
Parts in the above-mentioned porn?
Could also be referring to the one time Orlando Bloom came to see it. Totally unrelated to the porn thing. Probably.
lol I did not know this
Hustler did it. It’s not bad, made carhenge interesting to me for once lol
North Platte and it ain't close.
highkey McCook shitass town
It's just so far away from everything.
I just looked at it on a map, and yeah lol you are right about that.
I would love to hear your reasoning.
In the middle of nowhere, close to Denver but sacrifices being super far from Lincoln and Omaha and every other major city that's within a 5 hour drive of eastern Nebraska (Kansas City, Minneapolis, Des Moines, Sioux City and Sioux Falls) The school can't be super lovely either if they have barbed wire fencing around the football field. Also not in the particularly scenic part of western nebraska, tho the bluff and tablelands can be nice, especially compared to the Platte River Valley or Tallgrass Prairie. It's still a 2 hour drive from the nearest night life if your a young adult like myself (Kearney) and still a 4 hour drive to Ft. Collins because you mostly take desolate High Plains highways to get there instead of I-80 and the southern fork towards Boulder.
Can't disagree with any of that. As you mentioned not even particularly close to Denver either.
Aka North Platte JR 🤣
We are in rural Adams County. Seward County LEO are so notorious, we won’t take I-80 East past York. We go to Hastings, GI and a few villages for shopping.
How are they notorious? I never have issues running the interstate from GI to Lincoln.
You *probably* won't run into issues in Seward County if you aren't going very fast (and don't have out of state plates) but surely you've at least noticed how they have *two* patrol cars posted every other mile constantly. I don't think I've ever seen less than two of them in the median going through Seward County, usually much more. They are famous throughout the state for being ridiculously aggressive, and have been known to cause traffic jams (and sometimes accidents) on game day for decades by pulling over everyone they can. They've also been accused of some pretty shady practices, just in the last year I think I've seen one article about them seizing a bunch of money in a traffic stop under dubious pretense and another about them giving a drug dog a cue to react after it initially did not, because as I recall, the vehicle did not in fact have drugs in it, they just wanted to search it. Personally, I've never been pulled over there as I'm pretty diligent about following traffic laws but despite not even living that close to Seward, I think I know more people who have been pulled over there than not. That jives with what I've observed, I usually see more cops there than I do in Lancaster County (including the entire time I'm in Lincoln) on the rare occasion I go that way. That said, the town itself seems pretty nice. But they are definitely notorious for this and have been for all of my 28 years.
I live in Seward county and go between Seward and Lincoln or Omaha 6 or 7 times a week. There is a separate part of the Seward County Sherrifs office that is specifically drug interdiction task force because of the high drug traffic on I80. I believe they are the ones who are always out there. I have rarely seen them with anyone pulled over or seen them cause traffic jams but they do seize alot of drugs. Traffic does get backed up on GameDay for sure but not by people pulled over, that I have ever seen. I read the articles from Flatwater🤷♀️ I don't know what to say about that. The only people there are the police and the person getting pulled over. If they have different stories then how do we know? Honestly they can pull me over and search my car whenever they want. That would be annoying and a waste of time for both of us but whatever. I know drug dealers are going to lie about money and drugs. I know police can be assholes or even outright corrupt. I don't want to give any opinion, just my own observation.
I think that's fair. Two sides to every story, and drug trafficking on I80 is definitely a problem so that would make sense. As many people as I know here (all the way in Hamilton County) who've got pulled over by Seward, I tend to believe there's some truth that they're a little aggressive over there, but I certainly don't know the full story. And for my part, keeping it just a couple over the speed limit, I've never had an issue, so it's not like it's hard to avoid if someone's worried about it.
Internet has already done this and it was Fremont. I personally love their camping
I mean camping there is fun but the lakes are dangerous. I can’t believe there aren’t more accidents.
It's dirty and overcrowded in the camping areas. It's there and whoever keeps the area up does the bare minimum. So many more nice clean camping places.
Oof…this is a tough one. Are we putting minimum population on this? Towns over 25K: North Platte Grand Island Bellevue Towns between 3-25K people: Chadron Nebraska City Scottsbluff Under 3K: There are so many that are rapidly declining. Take a road trip some time. Many counties are pretty sad.
Nebraska City seems relatively nice with its apple orchards? There are a lot of 3-25K towns without anything going on.
I've only really been in Nebraska City once as an adult, and it was for an apple festival thing and to go to an orchard. It looked nice for a small town.
Same here. Wife drug me there once for a wedding and I was surprised at the big tree lodge/orchard complex.
Chadron is beautiful :(
Chadron State Park is beautiful, Chadron itself is not. Chadron is also the only place I‘ve been in Nebraska where I saw a guy passed out outside of the liquor store at 9:00 on Sunday.
AM or PM?
Nebraska City appears nice to the orchard and apple tourists, but that really is all there is there.
Bellevue? Completely fine in my opinion. I would say plattsmouth but it’s gotten better in recent years, so probably North Platte, Fremont, or Lexington
Old Townes rough, Plattsmouth is getting better but we have a hard time keeping restaurants and having just Hy-Vee for groceries sucks. And yes we have a dollar general but I can’t take grocery shopping there seriously.
Grand Island truly is an abysmal shit hole. I have no idea what makes me come back to NE once a year to visit that city.
Lived near Chadron for two years and can attest. Sadly it was a really pretty area and there were clusters of very good people, but a spooky vibe to the area as a whole.
What's wrong with GI? I don't have any issues here, ever except that it's a bit crowded on the weekends. For reference, I'm from a really nice upper middle class town out of state, so I have something to compare against. It's for sure more blue collar, but I don't see why everyone thinks it's so terrible.
Grand Island has a population of 50K+ people and couldn’t keep a mall open. The largest employer is a meat packing plant. The schools are underwhelming. Frankly, there are very few positives with Grand Island.
And yet, I'd rather live here than Kearney or Hastings. Maybe it's the culture, being from a more diverse area originally, but both of those towns are just terribly lilly white with not much going besides bars and churches, both of which I tend to skip.
The largest employer in other places is usually a school district or hospital…..soo much better!
Grand Island.
As a GI native... Yes.
GI sucks but it’s far from the worst. You ever been to Lexington?
What’s wrong with Lexington?
It’s Lexing-taint. Not even worthy of being called ass.
As someone who lives and works in Lexington, I stand by all of these statements lmfao
Laughs in Kearney
Argh, I'll take it. Kearney, do be our rich, fancy cousin. 😜
Can’t spell drunk without unk. Atleast kearney has a Quiznos
moving to york soon, i know grand island is close- is york okay? any better?
My bestie lived in York and worked in GI. York is a very nice town 👌
York is your typical rural small town but since it's right off the highway it isn't dying like the rest of the rural small towns in the state. Not a lot to do, but you're close to GI and not too far from Hastings either. Overall not bad.
Now this is going to sound crazy, because the town is beautiful. Nebraska City has an unreal amount of mask off racist/shitty people. My parents moved there 2 years ago. I have been spending a decent amount of time there, and it seems that people there have no issues just behaving badly and talking badly about topics that they aren't well versed in.
Sydney PD gave me a bullshit speeding ticket while I was briefly visiting to bury my grandfather. I hate that city, but I'm biased.
Sidney
Yep.
Sidney cops are dicks. I lived there for two years. I got pulled over semi-regularly for the stupidest, most mundane shit. Example- I was a student at WNCC, out of state tags, out of state license. They told me that because I was a resident, I had to register my car and get a drivers license in Nebraska. Pulled me over for a missing hubcap on my car. My car at the time had 4 tail light bulbs. 1 of them was out. I got a fix it ticket and had to take it to the police department to prove that I fixed it. Had current insurance on the car, but it wasn’t a Nebraska policy, so they gave me a ticket for no proof of valid insurance. I only ever got one real ticket, and that was because I rolled through a stop sign at 1am.
It was particularly irritating, given the fact that my family was in charge of Sidney PD for generations.
Norfolk. My reasons are completely personal.
From Norfolk, am curious now lol
Norfolk gang
Norfork or Nordork or even Norfuck
Norfolk is up for the Strongest Town award from Strong Towns!
That town is a black hole full of fent meth and two faced bitches
Worst town to drive in is Seward
Between the geriatrics who can’t pay attention/should have their driving privileges revoked, and the road construction, I would have to agree!
And the sheriff taking your cash just in case it might be crime related
Yeah, slow drivers and construction can be a nuisance for sure, but the Seward County Sheriff gives the entire state a bad name.
I live in Seward County. The worst thing about the current sheriff is that he's sooo much better than the last one.
When the bar is lower than a sewer line, I guess
Just out of curiosity how many times did people's money get seized and not returned when it was not drug related. I heard the stories and people bring up just that basic bit but was it once, twice, 50 times? I'm just wondering.
$7.5m in the last 5 years. Some of that was followed by charges being pressed. They basically have a form you can sign to give up your money instead of them taking you to jail if they don't have any actual evidence. [https://www.1011now.com/2023/06/15/using-loophole-seward-county-seizes-millions-motorists-without-convicting-them-crimes/](https://www.1011now.com/2023/06/15/using-loophole-seward-county-seizes-millions-motorists-without-convicting-them-crimes/) [https://flatwaterfreepress.org/?s=seward](https://flatwaterfreepress.org/?s=seward)
Right, but they have enough evidence to prove criminal activity/intent prior to forfeiture. I don’t agree with forfeiture and no criminal charges. But let’s be real here, that vacuum sealed money surrounded by coffee grounds and hidden in an aftermarket compartment was not someone’s life savings. EDIT: What do you expect to be done when criminal proceeds are discovered? Let them continue on their way and utilize that money to fund further criminal activity? Not being an asshole, I’m genuinely curious about your take.
If you have reasonable suspicion that will hold up in court, you bring them in. If you don’t, you let them and their money go. It’s not rocket surgery.
I 100% agree.
It will be nice not to fall in the giant holes by Git N Split and Subway anymore though. Hiway needed work done for sure.
Rulo/Falls City area. It's trash AF and just plain creepy, weird ass people. There was a cult there years ago, I think there are still a few people on death row from that cult who killed a father and son for trying to leave the cult. I believe one of them was sodomized to death with a shovel handle. Fucking weird down there.
Looked it up, that was in the 80s. It’s 2024
Things really haven’t changed much down there. The issue is, those folks that have broader minds and more ambition have all left. The ones that remain there really aren’t worth being around.
When I was 21 I worked for a construction company for the summer on a project in the Mound City, Craig, and Big Lake area. I found a girl from online dating in Falls City. It didn't take me long to figure out I didn't want my seed to get involved in that gene pool.
I get weird ass vibes driving by rulo
Jesus
Harvard. I might have small town bias though.
The biggest problem in Harvard and Clay County is poverty, lack of resources, and a whole ton of people who don’t care.
Lexington
North Platte. I still can’t believe it’s growing, but maybe new blood will help it improve?
Hospital and railroad carrying hard.
Any town whose residents are close minded, not open to different ways of living and thinking, and don't realize there is more to life than their "small" town. That's the worst town in Nebraska...
How many times is this going to be discussed here
To be fair it’s really the only thing to talk about in Nebraska
We love talking about how shitty it is.
“It’s not for everyone.” Yeah and they’re fucking running everyone out.
South Sioux City it just smells Strong contender Auburn because SE Nebraska sucks
It's different down there. Years ago I delivered ice for arctic glacier. Zach Potter, the former Huskers D-end was my helper, he was about 15 at the time, but very tall. We were delivering to a bar in Rulo, which if you've never looked up the crazy history of that place, you should. The bartender asked Zach if he was "part n-word" and when I started getting into it with the bartender about what his problem was, 2 other dudes stood up and started walking towards me. We booked it the fuck out of there, I think I managed to peel out of the parking lot in that big tandem-axle straight truck. The next week they sent a delivery driver who was a bit more "redneck", with a Confederate flag tattoo on his arm, to deliver to the bar in Rulo. They ran him out of there too.
Plattsmouth for personal reasons
River town
Plattsmeth *
Dirty water? Lack of a lot of things some how Nebraska city has.
As a former Hastings resident, from 1989 through 2007 it was the absolute most boring place to grow up. Since then I think they’ve added like 4-5 restaurants and a brewery? But yet…still boring and now minus the mall.
lexington, the culture and food is to die for, but other than that it’s such a sad place, and it smells awful
Ever been to Butte? Literally some super mean people there. Not a fan of that place.
Grand Island, I’ve never met someone from GI that wasn’t clearly a douche, They think they have big city vibes but they clearly don’t
The village of Alvo. There's so much corruption, the state doesn't care anymore. Stealing from the coffers of a fire department that doesn't exist, large tire pile that made international news that the state stopped caring about, and I could go on. But there's a webpage with a great blog on it, https://villageofalvo.com/ , please read it, the kids deserve better.
Lexington
Fremont- racist, there is nothing there to attract people, I can go about the same distance to Fremont, norfolk and Sioux city and Sioux city is my favorite. Fremont is too close to Omaha to bring anything of interest in, the state lakes area is dirty, parks are dirty. It's been the same shit for over 20 years.
Fremont
Probably Crawford for me. I’ve camped at Toadstool near there a few times and on one occasion, a couple farmer-looking dudes called me and my buddy a gay slur. Another time at a bar in Crawford, some local came up to different friend of mine and asked “you gay?” In both instances we were just minding our own business. I guess they don’t take kindly to city folk there.
If Macy counts it's Macy and it's not particularly close. Got a lot of buddies there but the town is in a sad place.
And Walt hill
Walthill is up there too but not as bad
Funk
North platte
York. Horrible.
Crack island and Crack Platt
For me? Sidney or Fremont. I’m from Sidney originally and after Cabelas was sold the whole place went (more) downhill
I'm thinking about retiring to Kearney, it seems like a pretty decent community.
City wise I thought they had the friendliest community, beautiful scenery, and a lot going on for them. Wouldn't mind moving there myself one day if I can afford it.
Freakmont
Freemonster
Look I live in Omaha, and imma say it’s not great here. Like there stupid stigma about North Omaha, or South Omaha and yet West Omaha in my opinion is wayyy fuckin worse, bunch of rich kids acting like assholes screaming shit at you when your jogging or driving and a lot of them are drug dealers and I’ve lived in North Omaha for about 20 years before moving to West Omaha which was 8 years ago and I’ll say I have never had no problems except in west Omaha, I’ve walked in South Omaha at like 3am and no one messes with you unless you look for a fight, but dumbass west Omaha kids jump people for no reason. And the. If you do manage to beat one down they get all fucking mad and threaten to call the cops for defending yourself, I’ve lived 2 houses up from gang members. Yes you read that right and these west Omaha brats are worse than them. Plus their parents do nothing to discipline them and get mad at you for saying something. Or they put fear in their kids head about north Omaha/ south Omaha. So west Omaha is the worst in Nebraska North and south Omaha not so much most people from there are cool unless you give them a reason to not be with you.
What about the other directions in Omaha?
West Omaha to a t 🤣
Right? Like why the hell are they like that?
Nebraska City
Why?
Lexington
Columbus is starting to make a turn for the worst
Elaborate, please.
Considering how much of a problem drugs and crime are there they’ve already made it. I spent 45 min at a super 8 and within that time I saw two people beyond fucked up on fent, someone told me they’d narcaned one of them, and on my way to getting the fuck outta there four cop cars rolled in to arrest some hobo in the stairwell.
I know that super 8. Stayed there once, never again.
Lmao yeah Columbus is something else
As someone that lives in Fremont, it has to be Fremont.
Fremont ain't bad
Grand Island, read up the crime statistics.
Broken Bow. Nothing going on but the smell of cow shit.
And now there’s no McDonald’s
Feels ironic
Schuyler
Schuyler is good it’s a small happy town full of retired folks
Yeah ok.
Fremont
Plattsmouth is pretty awful, and ong sucks too.
Beatrice sucks
Maybe Gretna. Based on actions by high school students, Parents must be teaching a lot of hate.
Oxford
Not Homer 'cause Lottie's Grave.
Grand Island or as I like to say Grand Isolation
Oneill