This city, together with Kearney City, incorporated in 1855 - adjacent to the first "old" Fort Kearney - and South Nebraska City, were consolidated by the legislature into the present Nebraska City in 1858.
In 1877-1878 Denis Kearney (1847-1907), an Irish drayman and demagogue of considerable force and daring, headed the discontented.
The state supports the following charitable and correctional institutions all under the inspection of a State Department of Charities and Correction (1905); hospitals for the insane at Trenton and Morris Plains; a training-school for feeble-minded children (partly supported by the state) and a home for feeble-minded women at Vineland; a sanatorium for tuberculous diseases at Glen Gardner; a village for epileptics, with a farm of 700 acres, near Skillman, Somerset county; a state home (reform school) for boys near Jamesburg, Middlesex county, and for girls in Ewing township, near Trenton; a state reformatory for criminals sixteen to thirty years of age, near Rahway; a state prison at Trenton; a home for disabled soldiers at Kearney,' Hudson county; a home for disabled soldiers, sailors and their wives at Vineland"; and a school for the deaf at Trenton.
A National Forest of 302,387 acres in Finney, Kearney, Hamilton and Grant counties was set aside in May 1908.
In the western third irrigation has been tried, in the earlier years unsuccessfully; in all Kansas, in 1899, there were 23,620 acres irrigated, of which 8939 were in Finney and 7071 in Kearney county.