Coming Home to Scottsbluff, Nebraska
The First One Hundred Years
by Donald E. Christensen

Published in 1999 by the Donning Company of Virginia Beach, Coming Home to Scottsbluff, Nebraska: The First One Hundred Years is the city’s official centennial history. Scottsbluff was founded in 1899 along the Burlington Railroad, across the North Platte River from Scotts Bluff and the older town of Gering. This volume traces how that railroad town grew into the largest city in the Nebraska Panhandle.

Author Donald E. Christensen (1934–2024) spent forty years at the Star-Herald as a photographer, pressman, and regional news reporter. With help from his wife, Jean, he gathered photographs and stories that show everyday life as well as civic milestones: homesteading and irrigation on the North Platte, downtown business blocks, schools and churches, sugar-beet country, wartime service, and the neighborhoods that took shape under the bluff.

The book is a pictorial history. Historic photographs, many from local families and newspaper files, carry much of the narrative. Captions and text place people, streets, and businesses in context, which makes it useful for local history readers and for family researchers looking for a named store, school, church, or relative.

A solid choice for anyone with roots in Scottsbluff, Gering, or Scotts Bluff County, and for collections of Nebraska Panhandle history.