A history of Alliance,
then and now
Postcards, papers and photographs of Alliance from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗The town was originally named Grand Lake. When the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad came to Grand Lake in 1888, the railroad superintendent, G.W. Holdrege, wanted to change it to a simple one-word name closer to the beginning of the alphabet, which he thought would be better for business. The U.S. Post Office gave Holdrege permission, and he picked "Alliance" for the new name of the town. Alliance was incorporated as a city in 1891.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Alliance’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
3 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewDas Gerichtsgebäude wird mit der …, 1899: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Alliance
See all 10 →
Alliance, decade by decade
![Alliance cyclone, August 4, 1911, [Nebraska(?)]](https://images.towntapestry.org/story/10827/a91fcb47f58e4f66a75c-s.jpg)
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Das Gerichtsgebäude wird mit der Eisenbahn von Hemingford ins etwa 30 km entfernte Alliance, Nebraska verlegt, Juli 1899 (1899) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Historic places
National Register · via Wikidata
From Wikimedia Commons (7), the Library of Congress (4) and the National Register (1). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.