With the America 250 festivities being planned for 2026, let’s look back at what Nebraskans did to celebrate the American Revolution Bicentennial in 1976.
A “birthday party” several years in the planning, folks from all over the state participated in parades and picnics, contests and concerts, fashion shows and festivals, symposiums and street dances. You can flip through the Nebraska Bicentennial calendar of events or an issue of the Nebraska Bicentennial Broadside newsletter to see where and when events took place in the Summer of ’76. The photos in this post can be found in the Nebraska Bicentennial Album.
These are just a few examples of documents housed in the Nebraska Publications Clearinghouse as part of our state documents collection. In an ongoing effort to make this collection as widely accessible as possible, we are retroactively scanning older documents such as these, and adding them to our online catalog.
Our Government Service Administrative Technician, Laura Mooney, found several more bicentennial gems worth highlighting, including:
- A7400 B001 -1977 Nebraska American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, A Final Report of Activities.
- A7400 T004 -1976 Nebraska at the two-hundredth year
- E1000 T009-1977 Nebraska’s 500-Mile Sculpture Garden
- E2450 H018 -1978 The Sculptors: Teacher’s Guide
The Nebraska Legislature created the Nebraska Publications Clearinghouse in 1972 as a service of the Nebraska Library Commission. Its purpose is to collect, preserve, and provide access to all public information published by Nebraska state agencies. By law (State Statutes 51-411 to 51-413) all Nebraska state agencies are required to submit their published documents to the Clearinghouse. For more information, visit the Nebraska Publications Clearinghouse page, contact Aimee Owen, Government Information Services Librarian; or contact Bonnie Henzel, State Documents Staff Assistant.
