OTOE – A new sign has been installed for the Village of Otoe at Highway 50 and Otoe Spur.

The monument sign features a steel skyline with the iconic grain elevator, St. John’s Lutheran Church, water tower and other structures.

The sign dates Otoe, formally Berlin, to 1860. The Otoe County Genealogical Society credits the founding of the village to Dr. Aurelius Bowen. The Missouri Pacific Railroad was proposing a rail from Kansas City to Omaha and Dr. Bowen gave 20 acres to the railroad and 20 acres to the village.

The Missouri Pacific was growing quickly since 1855, the year Otoe County was first defined,  but the onset of the war in 1860 slowed its growth as a percentage of its line was destroyed in battles by the states. MoPac did not connect Kansas City and St. Joseph until 1865. The first passenger train reached Berlin in 1883.

Bowen is said to have named the town for E.D. Berlin, a pioneer and Civil War veteran.

The village was first incorporated in 1896, when the population reached 200. It survived a tornado in 1913 and a rash of fires in 1918. Some believed the fires were due to anti-German sentiment in World War I and the name was changed to Otoe.

The population peaked in 1940 with 298 citizens.

Aurelius Bowen, a prominent physician an early settler of Kansas and Nebraska, made his home in Otoe County after he and his family were turned back by ruffians at Platte City, Mo., on his way to Kansas.

He was a state senator in 1873 and 1874. He drew up the first bill for a blind institute in Nebraska and the school was located in Nebraska City. He is credited for construction of the first high school west of the Missouri River in 1864.

He was surgeon of the Nebraska Second Calvary at the Battle of White Stone Hills in the Sioux War in 1863. He was considered an expert on diphtheria.

He was president of the Old Soldiers’ Association of Nebraska

He was elected a county commissioner in 1862

He was named postmaster at Berlin in 1887

1895 citizens took steps toward incorporation, choosing Claus Knabe as chairman and S.H. Buck as secretary. The Syracuse Herald said F.C. Knabe and Judge West transacted business in Berlin in 1897. The store F.C. Knabe and Co. was purchased by F.L. Hillman in 1896.

In 1885, The Nebraska City News wrote that the Village of Berlin boasts of an excellent baseball team.

https://rivercountry.newschannelnebraska.com/story/40927231/nc-ask-to-recognize-civil-war-doctor