Silver Creek, Nebraska

13 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1896 and the latest in 1985. It stands in Silver Creek Township. It lies in ZIP code area 68663. It stands on Silver Creek. The Survey maps it on the Silver Creek quadrangle. 320 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 1,542 feet above sea level.

Silver Creek within Merrick County

Population over time

2 figures

Silver Creek fell from 362 to 320 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

Year	People	Change
2010	362
2020	320	-42 (-12%)

Topographic sheets covering this place

6 surveys from 13 printed sheets

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

1896 USGS Stromsburg quadrangle1:125000, 5 printings
1955 USGS Fremont quadrangle1:250000, 3 printings
1957 USGS Fremont quadrangle1:250000
1958 USGS Fremont quadrangle1:250000
1958 USGS Silver Creek quadrangle1:24000
1985 USGS David City quadrangle1:100000, 2 printings

In the county-history sources

255 words on this township

A History of Merrick County, Nebraska: From "the Beginning" to 1895, published 1898 names this settlement in its chapter on Silver Creek Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

Silver Creek was platted by the Union Pacific in November, 1866. With the exception of the section house, the first building erected at the new station appears to have been built by Mr. B. F. Hobart. In September, 1870, Mr. Cyrus Lee erected a hotel called the "Lee House," which was the first semi-public building of which the little village boasted. Among the earliest settlers in and around Silver Creek were the Shaw brothers, Mr. Lathrop (who kept a ranch two miles below the town), J. and Ed Howland (who located a mile and a half north) and James Brown. During the year 1870, Rev. H. C. Shaw, one of the pioneer Episcopalian ministers, organized the society which still holds its regular sessions there. A district school was organized in 1871. In 1874 the Congregational church was organized and has grown in numbers and strength since that day.

Passage source: A History of Merrick County, Nebraska: From "the Beginning" to 1895, published 1898.

Silver Creek's newspaper history, so far as we are able to learn, is contaired in the record of the life of the Silver Creek Times, originally a Republican paper, but at the present time, under the editorship of the lion. Chas. Wooster, a representative of the Fusionists.

Passage source: A History of Merrick County, Nebraska: From "the Beginning" to 1895, published 1898.

Silver Creek derived its name from the clearness, sparkle and color of the little stream which meanders over the prairie near the town. Its growth in the twenty-one years since it was platted has not yet brought it into serious competition with the other towns of the county, but has none the less made it a substantial little country settlement.

Passage source: A History of Merrick County, Nebraska: From "the Beginning" to 1895, published 1898.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Silver Creek Township.

Fires near this place

11 since 2003

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 11 fires within 5 miles of Silver Creek between 2003 and 2014, burning about 72 acres in total. 1 started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Railroad operations and maintenance	3
Debris and open burning	2
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2
Smoking	2
Equipment and vehicle use	1
Natural	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
30 September 2004	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Nebraska Forest Service	not named
3 September 2003	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Nebraska Forest Service	not named
22 May 2007	Natural	under an acre	Nebraska Forest Service	not named
26 April 2013	Smoking	3.0 acres	Nebraska Forest Service	not named
21 April 2009	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Nebraska Forest Service	not named
2 April 2009	Railroad operations and maintenance	1.0 acres	Nebraska Forest Service	not named
9 March 2007	Equipment and vehicle use	1.0 acres	Nebraska Forest Service	not named
12 March 2014	Debris and open burning	60 acres	Nebraska Forest Service	not named

Every fire recorded in Merrick County

Storms near this place

27 since 1999

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Silver Creek in 27 storm reports between 1999 and 2023: 14 hail, 9 thunderstorm wind, 2 tornado, 1 flood. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
July 2020	Tornado (EF0)	Silver Creek	$200,000	Region 44 Emergency Management assisted with this survey. A brief tornado touched down north of Silver Creek, with a path length of approximately 4 miles and maximum wind gusts estimated to be 85 MPH. Damage was primarily confined to trees, with downed large branches and some uprooted trees. Irrigation pivots along and near the path were overturned. Two farmsteads were affected, one sustained minor damage to a small outbuilding and the other sustained tree damage.
August 2015	Thunderstorm Wind	Silver Creek	$100,000	Wind gusts estimated near 70 MPH blew over an irrigation pivot and resulted in significant crop damage within a localized area.
October 2001	Tornado (F1)	Silver Creek	$100,000	Tornado entered Merrick County from Polk County.
May 2003	Hail	Silver Creek	$50,000	no account filed
May 2003	Hail	Silver Creek	$50,000	no account filed
May 2002	Hail	Silver Creek	$50,000	no account filed
July 2011	Thunderstorm Wind	Silver Creek	$25,000	A few tree limbs up to 6 inches in diameter and power lines were knocked down.
June 2013	Hail	Silver Creek	$25,000	no account filed
June 2011	Hail	Silver Creek	$25,000	no account filed
July 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Silver Creek	$25,000	no account filed
June 1999	Thunderstorm Wind	Silver Creek	$25,000	no account filed
July 2006	Hail	Silver Creek	$10,000	no account filed
July 2006	Flood	Silver Creek	$10,000	no account filed
May 2004	Thunderstorm Wind	Silver Creek	$10,000	no account filed
June 2008	Hail	Silver Creek	$5,000	no account filed
June 2007	Flash Flood	Silver Creek	$5,000	no account filed
December 2021	Thunderstorm Wind	Silver Creek	-	A wind gust of 59 MPH was measured by a mesonet station located approximately 5 miles southwest of Silver Creek.
June 2020	Hail	Silver Creek	-	Observer reported mainly pea to nickel size hail, with occasional larger stones. Size of largest hail is unknown.
June 2014	Hail	Silver Creek	-	Winds were estimated to be 35 to 45 mph.
July 2011	Thunderstorm Wind	Silver Creek	-	Wind gusts were estimated at 60 MPH.
July 2023	Hail	Silver Creek	-	no account filed
June 2010	Hail	Silver Creek	-	no account filed
July 2008	Hail	Silver Creek	-	no account filed
August 2007	Thunderstorm Wind	Silver Creek	-	no account filed
April 2006	Hail	Silver Creek	-	no account filed
June 2005	Hail	Silver Creek	-	no account filed
April 1999	Thunderstorm Wind	Silver Creek	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Merrick County

Nearest settlements

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Place	Distance	Sheets
Havens	5.7 miles	13
Clarks	11.4 miles	13
Heber	21.7 miles	14
Riverside Park	22.2 miles	14
Central City	22.6 miles	14
Hord	24.3 miles	14
Paddock	26.5 miles	14
Archer	27.2 miles	13

Elsewhere

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

Wikipedia article on Silver Creek	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q1993680	The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0).

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 833434. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.

Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.