Westerville, Nebraska
11 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1951 and the latest in 1985. It stands in Westerville Township. It lies in ZIP code area 68881. It lies near Moody Valley. The Survey maps it on the Westerville quadrangle. 31 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 2,323 feet above sea level.
Population over time
2 figuresWesterville fell from 39 to 31 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 | 39 | |
| 2020 | 31 | -8 (-21%) |
Topographic sheets covering this place
5 surveys from 11 printed sheetsMatched 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.
- 1951 USGS Westerville quadrangle1:24000, 2 printings
- 1955 USGS Broken Bow quadrangle1:250000, 5 printings
- 1956 USGS Broken Bow quadrangle1:250000
- 1974 USGS Westerville quadrangle1:24000
- 1985 USGS Broken Bow quadrangle1:100000, 2 printings
In the county-history sources
984 words on this townshipHistory of Custer County, Nebraska; a Narrative of the Past, with Special Emphasis Upon the Pioneer Period of the County's History, Its Social, Commercial, Educational, Religous, and Civic Developement from the Early Days to the Present Time, published 1919 names this settlement in its chapter on Westerville Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.
was given the place because of a near-by bridge which the settlers had built across the creek and which was constructed of elm logs taken from the canyons. Other business men located there that winter and the following spring, and in honor of the first resident, James Westerv-elt. the new town was christened Westerville. It was here that Custer county's first newspaper, the Custer County Leader, was born, on. June 13. 1881, with George Trefren, publisher, and Samuel G. Beebe. editor. The Leader continued at Westerville until 1883, when Mr. Beebe moved with it to Broken Bow, where the county seat had been located the previous fall. Mr. Beebe continued to edit the Leader until 1888, when he was appointed postmaster of Broken Bow, by President Harrison. The Leader fell into tlie hands of the Central Nebraska Bank on ( )ctober 26th of that year. It was for a short time edited by J. H. Inman, then by R. H. ]\Iiller, after which the plant was leased to Jake Horn, of Callaway, and W. O. Chapman, of .Ansley. Fred S'hafifer succeeded Horn and Chapman, as editor. Mr. Shaffer, after a few months' experience, discontinued the publication and moved to Denver, where he continued in the newspaper business. He invested in mining stock that in a few years made him rich. The frequent changes in management went against the Leader and the material was sold to other offices.
Passage source: History of Custer County, Nebraska; a Narrative of the Past, with Special Emphasis Upon the Pioneer Period of the County's History, Its Social, Commercial, Educational, Religous, and Civic Developement from the Early Days to the Present Time, published 1919.
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 Westerville Township - it names this place 1 more 1 time.
Fires near this place
8 since 2009Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 8 fires within 5 miles of Westerville between 2009 and 2017, burning about 508 acres in total. None 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 |
|---|---|
| Equipment and vehicle use | 4 |
| Debris and open burning | 3 |
| Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 September 2012 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 1.0 acres | Nebraska Forest Service | not named |
| 19 June 2012 | Equipment and vehicle use | 1.0 acres | Nebraska Forest Service | not named |
| 29 May 2012 | Equipment and vehicle use | 2.0 acres | Nebraska Forest Service | not named |
| 5 March 2016 | Equipment and vehicle use | 1.0 acres | Nebraska Forest Service | not named |
| 4 March 2009 | Equipment and vehicle use | 2.0 acres | Nebraska Forest Service | not named |
| 26 March 2012 | Debris and open burning | 1.0 acres | Nebraska Forest Service | not named |
| 2 March 2013 | Debris and open burning | under an acre | Nebraska Forest Service | not named |
| 24 November 2017 | Debris and open burning | 500 acres | Nebraska Forest Service | not named |
Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:
Storms near this place
29 since 1997Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Westerville in 29 storm reports between 1997 and 2025: 18 hail, 7 thunderstorm wind, 1 heavy rain, 1 funnel cloud. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 2008 | Hail | Westerville | $250,000 | Hail sizes ranging from quarter to grapefruit size broke many windows, tore holes in the siding of homes, broke windshields in numerous vehicles, and severely damaged the vehicle bodies. |
| March 2019 | Flood | Westerville | $50,000 | Highway 70 east of Westerville to the Custer and Sherman county line was closed due to flooding. |
| June 1997 | Hail | Westerville | $15,000 | Large wind driven hail broke windows and caused roof damage in homes. |
| September 2008 | Hail | Westerville | $5,000 | no account filed |
| June 1999 | Hail | Westerville | $4,000 | no account filed |
| July 2025 | Tornado (EFU) | Westerville | - | Emergency management reports a brief touchdown of a tornado. No damage was reported. |
| July 2025 | Thunderstorm Wind | Westerville | - | Personal weather station measured a 59 MPH thunderstorm wind gust at this location. |
| July 2023 | Hail | Westerville | - | Public reported ping pong ball size hail south of Weissert. |
| July 2021 | Thunderstorm Wind | Westerville | - | Public reported a trailer knocked off its block and small tree branches downed. |
| July 2020 | Thunderstorm Wind | Westerville | - | Public estimated 60 mph wind gusts near Westerville. |
| June 2011 | Thunderstorm Wind | Westerville | - | Public reported 60 to 65 mph winds with heavy rain and nickel sized hail. Several 6 inch diameter tree limbs were down on highway 183. |
| June 2010 | Thunderstorm Wind | Westerville | - | The Severe Thunderstorm Winds were accompanied by 1 inch hail and they combined to break branches three inches in diameter and strip bark off trees in Westerville, Nebraska. |
| July 2008 | Heavy Rain | Westerville | - | Five inches of rainfall was reported to have fallen in less than a 3 hour period. |
| April 2003 | Hail | Westerville | - | Hail completely covered the ground. |
| April 2024 | Thunderstorm Wind | Westerville | - | no account filed |
| September 2019 | Hail | Westerville | - | no account filed |
| July 2018 | Hail | Westerville | - | no account filed |
| July 2015 | Hail | Westerville | - | no account filed |
| June 2014 | Hail | Westerville | - | no account filed |
| June 2014 | Hail | Westerville | - | no account filed |
| July 2013 | Hail | Westerville | - | no account filed |
| May 2013 | Funnel Cloud | Westerville | - | no account filed |
| May 2013 | Hail | Westerville | - | no account filed |
| May 2013 | Hail | Westerville | - | no account filed |
| May 2013 | Hail | Westerville | - | no account filed |
| May 2012 | Hail | Westerville | - | no account filed |
| June 2010 | Hail | Westerville | - | no account filed |
| June 2008 | Hail | Westerville | - | no account filed |
| July 2001 | Thunderstorm Wind | Westerville | - | no account filed |
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.
| Map | Place | Distance | Sheets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weissert | 5.9 miles | 11 | |
| Berwyn | 7.0 miles | 11 | |
| Ansley | 7.5 miles | 11 | |
| Elton (historical) | 8.9 miles | 11 | |
| Wescott | 11.5 miles | 10 | |
| Mason City | 12.7 miles | 12 | |
| Comstock | 13.3 miles | 11 | |
| Broken Bow | 13.7 miles | 12 |
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 Westerville | An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied. |
| Wikidata item Q3458295 | 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 834645. 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.




