Box Butte County was originally part of Dawes County. The distance to travel to the county seat was the main reason to divide the county in half in 1886. Named after a box shaped butte landmark used by early pioneers.

COURTHOUSE

Marriage, Probate and Court cases from 1887-1970’s are available at the Knight Museum & Sandhills Center. The Box Butte County Clerk Office is at 515 Box Butte Ave, Alliance, NE 69301 308-762-6565 but they would prefer that you contact the Museum. We will be happy to pick up if there is something that we do not have on site. Land records are found at the courthouse, and not at Knight Museum.

PLACE NAMES

The County only has 2 towns, Alliance and Hemingford and one unincorporated town Berea.

CEMETERIES

All Cemeteries are accounted for on Find A Grave. There are three major cemetiries and 15 small community cemeteries. The Museum has a page for each burial that includes an obit (if available), a stone photo and information from our 21 indexed databases.

CHURCHES

Box Butte County has 22 active churches. For contact information please call the Knight Museu at 308-762-2384. Records are varied or non-existent.

LIBRARIES

The local library’s historical research collection was recently merged into the Knight Museum as was the satelite DAR Lue Spencer Library.

FUNERAL HOMES

Bates-Gould Funeral Home is the only one in the area and their records are from 1960 to the present. The only other known records are from the Miller, Wildy and Landa funeral homes and those records are at the Knight Museum.

NEWSPAPERS

All newspapers from the area (1892-present) are available either in print or on microfilm at the Knight Museum. The Alliance Herald from 1902-1922 is available on Chronicling America by the Library of Congress.

SCHOOL RECORDS

Records are available at the Alliance School System 308-762-5475, 1602 Sweetwater Ave, Alliance, NE 69301; St Agnes Academy (Catholic) 308-762-2315, 1104 Cheyenne Ave, Alliance, NE or Hemingford Schools, 308-487-3328, P.O. Box 217, Hemingford, NE 69348. The Knight Museum has a file on each graduating class in the area for 1891 to the present and the completed collection of High School Yearbooks in book form or digitized. We also have records from the 54 rural schools that were here at one time.

SOCIETIES

The Knight Museum hosts the only ongoing group in the county called the Heritage Seekers, they provide programs to the public on a variety of topics.

WEB SITES

The Knight Museum : www.knightmuseum.com, Roots Web; Box Butte County and Facebook, Knight Museum & Sandhills Center; email, museum@cityofalliance.net

OTHER HINTS

The Knight Museum is the major source of data available in the county with a huge and growing collection including Family, Topic, Business, School, Church, Organization and Town Files, local authors, family books and histories, area county history books. Family Search recently digitized half a million pages of our records in 2016.